Lott Support Cuts Bush Credibility With Blacks

by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

In his Friday press conference Senate Majority leader- designate Lott said that he abhors racism, and vigorously opposes segregation. His mea culpa left many Republicans uneasy.

One fear: a severely damaged Lott would hamper their efforts to ram their agenda through Congress. That includes deeper tax cuts, Bush's faith-based initiative, and conservative judicial appointments. The other big fear: as majority leader, a damaged Lott ridicules the GOP campaign for diversity. A poll by BlackAmericaWeb.com found that the overwhelming majority of blacks demand that Lott resign. But many blacks went further and said they believed the Republicans were "closet bigots." A pointedly timed appearance by Lott this week on Black Entertainment Television to beg blacks for forgiveness is unlikely to change their negative perception of him and their belief that the Republican Party is an insular, bigoted party hostile to their interests.

The irony is that before Lott's outburst, Bush had softened that negative image. His appointment of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Rod Paige to high-ranking administration posts was a step toward extending the olive branch of racial friendship to blacks. A poll this year by Black America's Political Action Committee, a Washington, D.C., based, conservative leaning political action group, found that many blacks had reversed gears and said they thought that Bush was doing a good job as president.

Bush then did another savvy thing to rope more blacks into the Republican Party. He bypassed black Democrats and civil rights leaders and made his pitch directly to black community and religious leaders. He scurried to a score of black churches touting his, and the Republican Party's pet themes of faith-based charities, welfare reform, school vouchers, and minority business and homeownership.

A 2002 national opinion poll by the Center for Joint Political and Economic Studies, a liberal Washington, D.C., think tank, found the number of blacks who identify themselves as Democrats plunged over the two previous years. This was another sign that more blacks than ever were disillusioned with the "plantation politics" approach of the Democrats to black voters -- that is, Democrats demand their vote, but do little in return for it. The only real reason that blacks vote often in knee-jerk fashion for the Democrats is not because of any inherent belief that they offer much for them, but because they feel that the Republicans offer nothing for them.

Bush's strategy of actively courting blacks also exploded the colossal myth that blacks are reflexive liberals, Democrats, and will always answer to the beck and call of civil rights leaders. In 1956, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower sent the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction to Congress. Though Thurmond and the Southern Democrats chopped it to pieces, Republicans got credit for the weak version that finally passed. The same year, Eisenhower grabbed 39 of the black vote and won re-election. In 1960, Richard Nixon received 32 percent of the black vote against John Kennedy.

The Democrats got the black vote back in 1964 in part because Lyndon Johnson made good on his pledge to improve civil rights; and, in part, because blacks feared that Republican candidate Barry Goldwater's platform of states rights sent a horrible message that they were not wanted in the party. Blacks got the same negative signal from Nixon in 1968. And later, Colin Powell criticized his former bosses Ronald Reagan and George Bush, Sr. for not showing more sensitivity on racial matters.

In his first two years in the White House, Bush had a once in a lifetime chance to thaw the racial deep freeze of the Reagan and Bush Sr. years, snatch the political and ideological blinders from the eyes of Republican leaders, and change the perception that the Republican Party is nothing more than a cozy, good ole' white guys club. Lott is an unreconstructed Deep South politician who has bludgeoned every piece of legislation that remotely upholds civil right protections in the Senate, and has cozied up to the borderline white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. The Republicans' glacial caution on Trent Lott is yet another ominous hint that nothing has really changed for them.

Now, no matter how many black churches Bush turns up at to pitch the Republican line, and no matter how often he promises to make the party more inclusive, blacks almost certainly again will dutifully pull the Democratic lever in 2004.