The GOP's black tokens

[Judi Lynn]

Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - Page updated at 12:00 AM

Eugene Robinson / Syndicated columnist

The GOP's black tokens

WASHINGTON — It didn't work. The Republican Party put up three high-profile black candidates to try to weaken the bond between the Democratic Party and African Americans, and all three got slammed by the voters, big time. After a week of reflection, maybe Ken Blackwell, Lynn Swann and Michael Steele have come to understand that they never were intended to be viable candidates. From the start, they were more like cannon fodder.

There is no reason why Republicans can't someday win a big share of the African-American vote. All the GOP has to do is adopt policies that most black Americans believe will work to their advantage, rather than leave them behind. Oh, and Republicans also need to drop all thosecoded appeals to white racists, like the infamous "Playboy party" ad that helped defeat Democrat Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee.

Instead of making a legitimate play for the black vote, Republicans convinced themselves that tokenism would be enough. Judging from last Tuesday's returns, they didn't convince anybody else.

Whatever Karl Rove was smoking when he issued all those hyper-confident pre-election forecasts, he and other Republican strategists couldn't have seriously thought that Ken Blackwell would win as governor of Ohio. Blackwell's far-right views are too extreme for a state so evenly divided between red and blue, and his controversial tenure as Ohio's secretary of state — his decisions might have decided who won that state in the 2004 presidential contest — ensured that Democrats would be motivated to vote against him.
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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003422758_robinson14.html

[lcordero2]

1. !!!!!!!!!!

I was relieved the second that Blackwell conceded. I was making plans on the seventh to have my brother, his wife, and my mom drive upstate to his sister-in-law's house on the evening of the eighth. If something funny would have gone on with the vote results, I think that there would have been riots from coast to coast.

[qwlauren35]

2. Hmmm...

I'm not sure that it didn't work.

I personally know people who voted for Steele because he was black. Intelligent people. Who wanted to see another black man in the Senate. (I also heard other people call him a Tom, so it's not that we couldn't see what was going on.)

I'm curious to see the demographic statistics for Steele (they're not available yet). He was personable, and articulate. I couldn't vote for him because I could not have voted to put a Republican in the Senate - it was just too critical. But I'm not sure that all of Maryland's black voters felt that way.

Now, if Mfume had beat Cardin, Steele would have lost the entire black vote... but then, I have no doubt that other issues would have come up around Mfume's *name* as well as his background. I was a staunch Mfume supporter and campaigner, but I don't doubt that some Marylanders would not have been able to accept all of his past.

Can't comment on the other races, but I'm not quite sure that the Republican strategy is "failing". Because the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the real purpose is to win the black vote, or rather to get black candidates major name recognition in an area, so that they can be appointed to positions with less scrutiny. Black folks seem to rise in the Republican party BY APPOINTMENT. It's rather interesting what that says. Clearly we black voters aren't choosing them. But it doesn't stop us from seeing them, and seeing who is putting them in power. The Republican administration has now had two black Secretaries of State; it's not going to just disappear from our minds.