Stupid and the RNC’s Outreach Plan
Is the Republican National Committee just “stupid” as Gov. Bobby Jindhal (R-LA) implied last week, or just hell bent on business as usual, ignoring the minority vote til’ the next century? Either way, the same people who insisted Mitt Romney be anointed the GOP 2012 presidential nominee are the same people now in charge of the party’s image makeover and recruiting voters of “color” to the party: Yes, middle aged and old white men. And all signs point to the fact that we’re heading for the same underperforming results unless we change directions fast.
Nearly three months after the election, what we see coming from the RNC is lip service to minority outreach. A Republican source who is familiar with the committee’s inner workings told me there are still no blacks working at the RNC other than in administrative positions and only one Hispanic person working the RNC political department.
Maybe that’s why the outreach plan includes the Martin Luther King Jr. video, the RNC released Jan. 21, King’s holiday and Inauguration day, in which Priebus looked uncomfortable talking about King’s legacy. In the three minute video, Priebus is surrounded by four people, two of which are minorities, who never speak but look like hostages held against their will. Does the RNC like its minorities silent with no voice or influence?
Adding insult to pandering insult, during the RNC’s winter meeting held in Charlotte in January, it approved a resolution to commemorate the achievements of black Republican Frederick Douglass. This is the RNC’s idea of outreach to black voters: a resolution and a video!
Priebus says he wants to spend time doing “extensive research” on why the GOP lost in 2012 and learn ways they can grow the GOP tent beyond white voters. In the press release announcing the initiative, the RNC proclaimed “The Growth and Opportunity Project is co-chaired by five prominent Republican leaders.” But there lies the problem.
Oddly enough, the five people Priebus appointed are part of the GOP establishment, do not bring a fresh perspective. The committee includes: Henry Barbour National Committeeman from Mississippi (nephew of longtime Republican Haley Barbour); Zori Fonalledas, National Committeewoman from Puerto Rico; Glenn McCall, National Committeeman from South Carolina; Sally Bradshaw, Veteran senior strategist in Florida and national politics; Ari Fleischer, Former White House Press Secretary (under George W. Bush, this part was omitted from the press release)
What’s striking about this makeover gang of five is there are only two people of color. How can we seriously have increase our standing with minorities if the committee designed for outreach isn’t majority minority?
It’s doesn’t require a brain surgeon to figure out what the Republican Party needs to do to win. Nor does the RNC need to spend months navel gazing, hosting conference calls and meetings to the hear from the same people they’ve been hearing from.
What the RNC needs to do is to start building meaningful relationships with Asians, blacks and Hispanics, take the conservative message outside of its comfort zone of the suburbs into the cities, particularly inner cities. It’s really not hard to do, if you are serious about “growing” and winning.
The RNC needs to take the conservative message to all Americans.We need to ask Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (TX) how she got 26 percent of the black vote in 2006. We need to ask Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn) how he won 26 percent of the black vote in 2008 or what Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ strategy was to win 20 percent of the black vote in 2008. How about the RNC hosting forums in cities across the country or at colleges, particularly historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), featuring young, diverse Republicans talking about why they are conservative?
Priebus needs to give a mandate to all state chairmen and committee members to tell their local parties to make it a priority to recruit more minority members to the over 3,000 local Republican chapters. Now is time for the GOP to literally take its message to the street. The party will only get more diverse through grassroots outreach.
Meanwhile, while the RNC is contemplating the next phase of its life, perhaps it should reexamine its rules for membership to the RNC. Currently, each state or territory has a state chairman and a committeeman and committeewoman. As David A. Bositis wrote in “Blacks & the 2012 Republican National Convention, “at least one third of the members of the RNC are women by quota.” But there are no quotas for minorities. I think the RNC should either have quotas for all or quotas for none.
The RNC also needs to do a much better job identifying and supporting minority and women candidates. Not just monetary support but strategic support to help them win.
Ultimately, the GOP won’t begin to shed it’s “white only image” if it continues to use mostly white spokespeople talking about conservative values. Chanel recently hired Brad Pitt to be appear in its Chanel No. 5 perfume ads because Brad makes anything sexy and Chanel wants more women to buy it’s perfume.
If the RNC wants more minorities to buy its message, it should use spokespeople who look more like Sarasota Springs, Utah Mayor Mia Love, Senator Kelly Ayotte, Senators Tim Scott, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz and less like Ari Fleisher and Henry Barbour. It’s time for RNC make conservatism sexy because “stupid” has got to go.
@ Scott
“You seem to be saying that both sides are liars and cheats, but the Republicans are not even bothering to pretend they care about the average guy.” Yes, this is exactly what I am making a poor attempt at saying. People who are struggling are hoping the dems will help them while knowing the reps could care less. I don’t hope because I have seen enough to know better. Yes there are people that I believe actually care, people like Marcy Kaptur, Byron Dorgan, Fritz Howlings and Sherrod Brown. But the democratic leadership has sold us out whereas the republican leadership has basically told us to take our silly problems down the road.
As a social conservative and fiscal liberal, the libertarian seems diametrically opposed to everything I believe in. Still Ron Paul was the only candidate in the republican primary that made sense. The people who ran all of those debates basically ignored everything he said. It was almost like he was speaking Chinese or some other foreign language. They made him look like a crazy man and all he was doing was telling the truth. I was not on board with all of his solutions, but I admire him for actually giving a reasonable assessment of where we are and where we are heading instead of all of the smoke and mirrors I usually hear. I have reservations about anybody who seems to put black people into a second class role in this society and I am not indicting Ron or Rand Paul in that regard. However I will give them a good scrutinizing if they ever get any traction. For now the media is making them look irrelevant by giving us two choices, bad and worse.
I am going to have to use that potato and spice line.
@Wes – I thought about the spice line. It really might be selling spice to a guy who can’t buy potatoes while the salesman eats beef. I am guilty of making that up, thanks for the compliment.
Funny, I consider myself a social liberal and fiscal conservative. Yet we seem to have some common ground.
Would like to communicate more, wish there were a way to give you, but not the whole world my email address.
@ Scott
The beauty of this venue is if I say something that isn’t factual, people like truevoice can always chime in with a “Wait a fricken minute” kind of a challenge or correction. I tend not to respond timely when it comes to email, but for some reason I am driven to communicate here in a timely fashion. I don’t think it is the topic but I am most curious regarding what will be said. I haven’t posted on the latest blog but I read the responses.
I posted on bulletin boards back in the nineties and it was amazing what I learned. Can you imagine I was told that GW Bush would be the next president BEFORE he publically stated that he would even run? Obviously I didn’t believe that person at the time, but once W announced he would run I became very alert. Once he won the nomination, I knew the person that told me he was the next hand picked person in line to be president, I knew that person had connections. I have no such connections. I just watch, and what I see is that Obama is sort of a de jure kind of guy. That is why some people see a lot of similarities between what he is doing and what W did.
I like to learn and I prefer to communicate in this venue. I’ve learned a lot from you and others. Any point raised as though it is a fact should stand up to critical analysis. In a one on one dialog, the rebuttal is only as strong as the person making the rebuttal. However in the public forum, hundreds of people from all walks of life are out there waiting to challenge anything said. I prefer to abandon all of my notions that I hold only because of certain prejudices I have, and rather hold onto the truth and the facts as they present themselves. One truth is I genuinely wanted Obama to succeed because of the color of his skin. Another truth is that he is no different than his predecessors. My position may sound like reverse racism to someone who has never walked in my shoes. But to those who have, it probably sounds like a dose of common sense. As you are aware, some people are down right puzzled by why anyone would want to be a black conservative. Indeed there are valid reasons. I guess I am here to learn what some of them are that I don’t hold and confirm the ones that I do.
@Wes – agree with lots of what you said. just wonder about relevance to the blog itself. thanks.
@Wes – I agree, just wondered about how much others were interested in our line of discussion. It seems way off topic.
Thanks for all your thoughts and for your civility.
to all: sorry about the double post – the first one was refused at my end.
Those of us who fit the old white man class are having trouble understanding what it is that we need to do to gain access to the minority commuity.
You see we have it firmly implanted in our mines that a fare and good society is one that doesn’t see color or gender as criteria in making decision on what is good for this country. We apply that reasoning to things like affimative action, which when we do it is interpited as we hate blacks.
I truly believe in my heart that welfare (especially when it becomes a way of life) destroys all those who are on it, including the large number of whites who are living on it as well. The great projects that were suppose to improve are cities are total disaster. I just watched a video of the Detroit city counsel and it was, atleast in my eyes a prescription for more of the same which has led to the total decline of that once great city.
I want blacks to thrive. I want Mexicans and asians and whites to thrive. What then is the best enviroment for them to do so. I personally believe a honest look at free markets needs to be part of the discussion. Most who oppose free markets oppose it for the same reason that i oppose the left wing program.
When government interfers with the markets they make it possible for crony capitalisim, or a market that only looks like it is free. regulations and restrictions on business which seem to be good only keep the small businessman down.
I would hope that some in the black community could see that free markets and small businesses, both white and black, are the best solution to the plight of our cities.
Well then for me, white old and conservative, how do I get the message accross that a free society also includes being free to pursue ones own happiness.
John, you make the typical conservative mistake of linking welfare with the black community. Also standard in your benign condescending attitude, you make a broad generalization of the decline in the cities being liberal based. Detroit is not the capital of Michigan; Lansing is. The governors over five decades have been Republican. So until you take an honest assessment of the issues, you would have no effect in the black community….and neither would any other conservative
You guys really don’t get it, or you are being willfully stupid.
“Scot” actually had the audacity to post that Herman Cain and Colin Powell did more to fight racism than Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Can you really be this damned stupid ? Up until now Colin Powell has for all these years given consent to the RAGING racism of the GOP/Conservative moment by simply not addressing it, and Herman Cain is nothing short of a damn minstrel show.
Let me lay it out for you as one of 99% of African Americans who absolutely despise the GOP. We see the movement for what it is. There is no secret as to why the conservative movement is made up of White persons. We are not “misguided”, or “confused”(which are just fancy ways of saying that black folk just don’t know what’s good for them…they are like children…you know?). The modern conservative moment w/r to the United States is NOTHING more than the Neo-Confederacy. I mean seriously….in this day and age they actually tried to blatantly disenfranchise people of color. They continuously get caught doing things like trading pictures of Obama as a monkey, or the White House being surrounded by a water melon patch, their TV and radio personalities on a daily basis accuse people of color of being lazy and too dumb to think for themselves. Your politicians are openly racist(Steve King comes to mind). The GOP are ones who came up with the Southern Strategy…you know the one where they purposely scape goat Blacks to win elections….
In closing let me give you a list of all the things conservatives fought against and still oppose today:
Civil rights
Civil rights act
Labor laws
Clean water and air laws
Food Safety laws
Womens sufferage
Public services(schools, police, firefighters, etc)
Your right to bargain for fair compensation for you labor.
Emancipation of slaves
Voting rights
Laws against violence against women
etc…etc…etc…
…and for the guy who said he is color blind and he doesn’t see race…your a liar. Of course you “see color” when you encounter a person of color, and everything that goes with it. The Americas has been race conscience ever since Europeans set foot on it 600+ years ago….but somehow you don’t “see color”.
So in closing…the reason we don’t like you is because you and the people you align yourself with made it clear that you really don’t like us.
This whole fraud of a “conservative black chick” sounds like a TEA Party front to deceive the readers. I wonder how much this alleged black woman is being paid (she’s probably just another angry old white guy in some basement of his parents who has never had a job and is on welfare and self-hatred) by the TEA Party…and if this website is part of the $10 million minority “reach out” scheme that Reince Preibus proposed in the lowlife CPAC conference… Intelligent minds wanna know just how far the deceit goes in the GOP that they stoop to these levels… This is just too transparent…
MDB: just a clarification: Colin Powell left the Bush Administration because he was lied to…and made to lie…by the lowlifes Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. They made a liar of the Honorable General Powell in front of the entire world body and Colin left the Bush Administration because of it…because Colin has moral values and Liberal Principles like honesty, sincerity in government, trust of the People, belief in the Constitution, and the Liberal Value that elected representatives should not lie and deceive Americans for the purposes of promoting false wars and what can only be called mass murder against 100,000 innocent Iraqi citizens.
@Truevoice, I did notice that, Interesting how no one responded to that.