Proper Political Outreach

Thomas Sowell slams "Me-Too" Republicans for drawing the wrong lesson from Mitt Romney's electoral defeat, particularly with regard to how a recent report proposed that the GOP appeal to voters who happen to belong to racial and ethnic minority groups:

They propose going through such organizations as the NAACP to reach black voters, as if the NAACP owns blacks, in violation of the 13th Amendment. Not only is the NAACP virtually a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, the kind of black voters that the Republicans have some hope of winning over are unlikely to be enthralled to the NAACP, and many of them may see through such race hustlers.

Or do all blacks look alike to those who wrote this report?

Sowell notes further that the party needn't chip that much away at bloc voting to improve its electoral fortunes. Then he really hammers the approach exemplified by the above proposal: "You might think that a Republican Party that talks about individualism would try to appeal to individuals."

Either one is attempting to effect positive change or not, and either there is, at any given moment, a critical mass of support for such change or there is not. Assuming the answers to the implied questions are "yes" and "no", then the proper course of action is to start changing minds. The first step down that road is making it clear that there is a better alternative.

Pretending to be "more of the same" will backfire when one inevitably has to deliver more of the same, or is caught not doing so. It is also insulting to the minds of the real audience one abandoned in a mindless quest for quantity as a substitute for quality. Constructive change requires quality and quantity.

-- CAV