Why did Ken Mehlmann, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and a Karl Rove protégé, apologize for the GOP’s use of racial polarization to win past elections at the NAACP National Convention? The answer lies in the critical black Democratic vote in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Minnesota.
Solid Republican majorities in the eleven states in the Solid South along with Texas and Florida mean that Democrats are totally dependent on the large electoral votes in the Rust Belt and upper Midwest to be competitive in presidential contests. Without strong African-American majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and maybe even Minnesota, John Kerry would have lost all of these states in 2004. The black voter in the upper Midwest is a major barrier to the complete Republican political dominance Rove aspires to and has so relentlessly cultivated.
While President Bush continues to snub the NAACP, he did send a surrogate, Mehlmann, to apologize for racial policies of the Republican party in the past. This cynical tactic seeks positive media and more importantly makes it easier to persuade African Americans who are otherwise attracted to the GOP’s social and economic policies. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert rightly calls Mehlman’s words “worse than meaningless … they were insulting.”
Herbert is on-target with his charge about the GOP’s Southern Strategy: “The Southern Strategy was more than some members of the GOP simply giving up on African-American votes. It fed like a starving beast on the resentment of whites who were scornful of blacks and furious about the demise of segregation and other civil rights advances. The idea was to snatch the white racist vote away from the Democratic Party, which had committed such unpardonable sins as enacting the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and enforcing desegregation statutes.”
Republicans have continued the strategy of pandering to blatant racists and helped to prevent or discourage blacks from voting. Unfortunately, the Southern Strategy has been successful in exploiting white racism and implementing policies contemptuous of African Americans. White Southerners provide a majority for Republicans in the Senate. GOP politicians have gained control of the House by packing black votes into “majority minority districts” and winning in white districts. Sadly, they have gotten a great deal of help from black Democrats.
The use of race and social conservatism as wedge issues has enabled the GOP to enact policies anathema to much of its working-class base. The Democratic Party must learn to challenge the contradictions inherent in the wily GOP’s real priorities, or Rove and his minions will continue to win.