October 31, 2006
Harold Ford, Jr., and the Future of Black Politics II Posted by Fredric Smoler at 04:15 PM EST In a post on Harold Ford, Josh Zeitz noted that African-American voters appear to be more religious than most other voters, and perhaps in consequence more hostile to gay marriage, and he wondered whether cultural conservatism will become more characteristic of African-American elected officials than has recently been the case. Josh noted that the Republicans are unlikely to profit from this cultural conservatism, since African-American voters are suspicious of the strength of Republican commitments to civil rights and hostile to Republican economic policies. I think all of this is shrewdly observed, and probably right.
Interestingly, this same cultural conservatism is apparently true of a large number of Hispanic voters, who have on this account recently been the linchpin of Republican electoral strategy. Despite this “values” strategy, nativist (or at least perceived anti-immigrant) tendencies among portions of the Republican electorate seem to have prevented any Republican breakthrough among Hispanic voters, to the distress of the White House. The worst electoral nightmare for the Republicans would be a consequent loss of any chance at a larger slice of the Hispanic vote, continuing loss of the African-American vote (which was largely Republican before the New Deal, and only wholly lost to the Democrats after the civil Rights revolution), continuing problems with women over foreign policy, and continuing loss of some middle-class white voters, of both sexes, on a variety of grounds (not only foreign policy, but a revulsion at hard-line cultural conservatism, the sort that backs creationism in the schools while pandering to homophobia, and also a perception that the Republicans are bad on the environment, on social services many middle-class voters need, etc.) If this happens, the Republican strategy of seizing and holding the Christian right and the white South, the apparent magic bullet of the post-1980 Republican Party, will turn out to be a long-run strategic disaster.
What are grounds for Republican hopes? In my opinion, real Republican hopes depend on the Democrats reinforcing doubts about their competence on national security, if that issue again comes to the fore. Cultural politics indeed make for wedge issues, but there are other wedge issues, as well, and most of them, although not all of them, cut the Republicans a smaller slice of the pie. National security, though, tends to trump other issues when there is a perception of a real threat. Osama bin Laden can’t win it for the Republicans all by himself. He’ll need help from the Democrats. Some of them—it is not yet clear how many—may be willing to oblige.
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