From
Joshua Green at Bloomberg Businessweek on why the recent Rethuglican "autopsy" on what went wrong in the 2012 election ignores a key point regarding African American voters:
"...There are pages and pages of recommendations about hiring minority
outreach directors, having a presence in black churches, rolling out
black surrogates, and on and on. But the report says nothing—at least
nothing that I saw—about the two biggest reasons why African Americans
(and members of any minority group) might feel disrespected.
"The
first is the systematic effort by Republicans across the country to
impose voter-identification laws that would mainly serve to
disenfranchise minority voters. (Anyone interested in learning more
about this problem should read the symposium on voting rights in the latest issue of the journal Democracy.)
"The
second is what many people regarded as the thinly veiled racism that
lay at the root of the 'birther' attacks claiming President Obama is a
Muslim born outside the United States. At one point, public opinion
polls showed that more than half of Republicans believed these absurd and insulting claims—claims that were difficult to imagine being lodged against a white president (UPDATE: I stand corrected — white president Chester A. Arthur weathered a birther controversy over whether he was born in Canada.)"
Similarly, Hispanics won't forget the Rethuglicans' outright (and continuing) hostility to their presence in this country (see
"self-deportation"), nor will the gay/ lesbian community forget the Rethuglicans outright (and continuing)
hostility to their rights as citizens to marry, nor will women forget Rethuglicans' outright (and continuing)
hostility to their reproductive rights and to programs that help support healthy families. You can "outreach" all you want to these constituencies, but they see the effort for what it is: a sham.
