<p>*It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S’s: Slavery, Secession, Segregation and now Socialism.</p>
<p>It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860’s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950’s and 1960’s.*</p>
<p>The Democratic party has done a good job portraying the Republican party as a party for White racists, so I believe Black Republicans are viewed as sellouts. </p>
<p>The Democratic party is just using minorities to win elections, they don’t offer anything new, their policies are not progressive. They always offer band-aid solutions to some of the complex problems facing minorities; HIV, Schools, etc.</p>
<p>For a fascinating look at how the political landscape changed during the 1960’s and how those changes are still affecting us today, I highly recommend Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland. Back then there were many liberal Republicans, and the term was not an oxymoron.</p>
<p>tega–No, the Republican party has done a good job of portraying the Democrats as the party of “tax and spend”, while the facts indicate otherwise. Under which administrations has government spending spiralled out of control? Republican every time.</p>
<p>Responsible Republicans should demand their party back.</p>
<p>Because the thread title references Martin Luther King, Jr., who championed civil rights, opposed the Vietnam War, fought for labor rights, and overall advocated for deep social change.</p>
<p>Actually, the saga goes back to the first Reconstruction. Immediately following the Civil War, the Republicans needed black votes in the south to maintain a national majority, so they gave the vote to black men (but, not women of course), while disenfranchising the white Confederate men. This resulted in a decade or so of very heavy black voter participation across the South.</p>
<p>As the 19th Century drew to a close, the country was rapidly explanding across the West which added dramatically to the Republican majority, to the point where the Republicans no longer needed the South. The abandoned the enforcement mechanisms that allowed black voter participation and returned the right to vote to white Southern men (but not women, of course). As the Republicans pulled back, the Southerners quickly ended black voter participation with a combination of Jim Crow and violence (KKK-style). By the early 20th century, black voter participation had returned to essentially zero, where it remained until Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, giving the federal government the authority to punish voter discrimination.</p>
<p>The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 marked the end of the Democratic Party in the South. Southern politicians began a mass exodus for the Republican Party that was essentially complete in a couple of decades.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has increasingly become a party that across the south and much of the country only carries African-American urban districts and a few ultra-liberal wealthy suburbs and college towns. Increasingly, the two parties are segregated along racial lines. Bush beat Kerry by 17% among white voters in 2004. Failure to attract white voters is the fundamental reason that the Democrats have only elected one President in the last quarter century.</p>
<p>Here are the exit polls by race for the 2004 Presidential Election:</p>
<p>White (77% of voters)
58% Republican
41% Democratic</p>
<p>African-American (11% of voters)
11% Republican
88% Democratic </p>
<p>Latino (8% of voters)
44% Republican
53% Democratic </p>
<p>Asian (2% of voters)
44% Republican
56% Democratic </p>
<p>Other (2% of voters)
40% Republican
54% Democratic </p>
<p>You can see two things clearly. </p>
<p>The Democrats have a serious problem with their failure to appeal to white voters, who make up more than three-quarters of the electorate.</p>
<p>The Democrats have no choice but to become the African American Party. If they were ever to lose the virtually unanimous support of black voters, the party would lose by landslide margins. This is why African American districts are awarded extra delegates in the nominating process and why I believe the Democratic Party will, in the future, nominate only African American candidates for President. Of course, the cost of this 11% tail wagging the dog is policies that further alienate white voters.</p>
<p>"The Democrats have a serious problem with their failure to appeal to white voters, who make up more than three-quarters of the electorate.</p>
<p>The Democrats have no choice but to become the African American Party."</p>
<p>I think these two statements are contradictory. And as the percentage of minority voters continues to increase nationwide, and as they, and new voters, become more and more Democratic (which I’m not sure is a good thing, just the reality), Republicans have no choice but to try to figure out how to win as the party of old white guys.</p>
<p>I believe the increases are only among Latino/a and Asian American voters. The Democrats, of course, failed to nominate the candidate with overwhelming support in these two groups, instead moving futher towards becoming the African American party. The Democrats did not even count the primary votes of one of the largest “Latino/a” states in the country, disenfranching those voters entirely from meaningful participation in selecting a Democratic nominee.</p>
<p>The ideal Democratic candidate needs to have strong appeal to all three minority groups: Latino/a, African American, and Asian American – plus the ability to siphon off some working class white suburban and rural voters.</p>
<p>The Republicans gained 9% among Latino/a voters and 3% among Asian American voters in 2004.</p>
<p>“I believe the increases are only among Latino/a and Asian American voters.”</p>
<p>We’ll see - I think you will see HUGE increases in African-American voter registrations. And virtual total rollbacks and more among Hispanic and Asian-American voters, and massive increases in Democratic registrations among young voters.</p>
<p>The result is increased marginalizaton of Republicans. We are already seeing that in local/statewide elections. Whether that carries over to Presidential races, we’ll just have to see.</p>
<p>Registration is short term. The long-term trend is population growth. Here the handwriting is on the wall. Any political party that fails to appeal to Latino/a voters will be in dire trouble.</p>
<p>BTW, we didn’t see “HUGE” increases in African American percentages of the electorate in the Democratic primaries. African American voting is already more or less proportional to the population as a whole, meaning there are no easy gains in registration and voting.</p>
<p>The other problem for the Democrats is that African American voting is concentrated in districts they already win (urban inner city) or in states where they have no prayer (Deep South). This works against the Democrats in winner take all national elections. Losing South Carolina by 5% instead of 17% makes no difference.</p>
<p>South Carolina is a perfect example of the Democrats Catch-22. Black voters make up more than half of the primary electorate and, therefore, control the nominating process. But, they only make up 30% of the electorate in the Presidential election in the state. To the extent that their preference in the Democratic Primary has even less appeal to the majority voters in the state, the Democratic Party falls farther and farther behind.</p>
<p>Again, we’ll see. Since I’m not a Democrat, I don’t have a dog in this race. </p>
<p>“BTW, we didn’t see “HUGE” increases in African American percentages of the electorate in the Democratic primaries.”</p>
<p>Reports on Virginia registrations post primary are massive. Same in African-American parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Hispanic registrations in Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado are way up. And, apparently, both are way up in Georgia. Polls won’t catch them, of course, as they have not been on registered voter lists.</p>
<p>I have no idea how this will play out in the Presidential election (I have assumed all along that McCain has about a 4% “race premium”). But the impacts at the local/state and Congressional levels may be generational in nature.</p>
<p>Right. And where do you think these reports are coming from?</p>
<p>Remember, these are the same shills who bought that baloney about Obama “redrawing the electoral map” in states like Mississippi". Of course, now that the primaries are over and we see where the money is being targeted, we see that was a lie, too.</p>
<p>BTW, I recently heard the stories from a die-hard full-time paid Obama field organizer trying to meet her daily quota of 30 new registrations in African American neighborhoods of West Philadelphia this summer.</p>