The Republican Party's Minority Problem

For the second time in 4 years, the Republican Party finds itself defeated by President Obama, on the strength of minority voters who overwhelmingly supported his re-election bid.

In their post-election assessment, establishment Republicans are left licking their wounds and are calling on the party to embrace a moderate platform that they hope will be seen as more inclusive of the changing demographics of the American electorate. This version Republican-Lite has already been dismissed as a token effort by the party’s political opponents and is degrading and insulting to any minority looking for an alternative to the usual Democrat dogma.

One major problem with the Republican Party is that its current leadership doesn’t seem minority friendly.  The leadership’s interest seems to rooted in raising massive amounts of money to keep their position secure and not crafting a receptive message aimed at a diverse voting base.

Another problem is that the party waits until convention time to highlight their minority elected officials.  Even the few minority operatives that do appear in the media always seem to come off either as totally scripted or unconformable with the tasks at hand, which makes them easy picking for their political opponents and the media.

Take Mayor Mia Love as an example. Why did the RNC wait until convention time to highlight her American story? Mayor Love should have been introduced to the voting public right after she won her Mayoral race more than two years ago. While the RNC did line up an impressive and impassioned group of minority speakers at the convention, the one night affair was dismissed by Democrats and the allied media as pure tokenism. The party leaders did not even try to defend themselves from that charge. How does a political party recruit more minorities, when it will not defend the ones within the party already?

Rather than downplay the Tea Party as the establishment has tried to do for more than 2 years now, maybe they should follow our example about putting forth ideas that appeal to those thinking minorities. The Democrats and their allies would have to go to great lengths to pretend or ignore the fact that the movement was appealing to a new generation of minorities.

The GOP establishment remain in a state of denial; they are looking for someone to blame for the fact that “the Rove Strategy” of massive amounts of money means massive numbers votes. But the establishment only has itself to blame for believing in such a flawed strategy, while alienating a whole host of other voters including minorities looking for an alternative to the Barack Obama version of America.