By Alan Bean
As things presently stand, Mitt Romney can count on 60% of the white vote, 33% of the Latino vote and 0% of the African American vote.
Not 5% . . . 0%. There may be a few thousand black Republicans nationwide willing to pull the lever for the white guy, but there aren’t enough of them to constitute a single percentage point.
I would have thought that a small but measurable contingent of black voters would be with the Republican candidate. He is the pro-life, anti-gay rights candidate, after all, and black evangelicals have a reputation for being pro-life and anti-gay rights.
And what about the small sliver of the black electorate wealthy enough to be helped by Republican fiscal policy? What’s with those guys?
According to the Washington Post, Republican candidates like George W. Bush and Bob Dole captured just over 10% of the black vote. Hardly a stellar performance, but an improvement on an absolute electoral vacuum.
The lack of Latino enthusiasm for Mitt Romney is understandable. A harsh anti-immigrant stance lay at the heart of Romney’s primary season strategy and the new Republican Party platform shifts to the right of their standard bearer.
Romney made a point of attending the NAACP conference in July where he claimed to be the candidate who would do the most for African Americans.
No one was fooled.
When the Republican candidate used his NAACP address to flay “Obamacare” it was obvious that the folks assembled before him weren’t his real audience. Romney’s cynical handlers were hoping that the sight of their man being booed and heckled, however politely, by a room of black opinion leaders would help his standing with the white electorate.
And we’re not talking about the conservative white voters who wouldn’t vote for Obama if you held a gun to their heads. The message was aimed at white swing voters; the folks on the fence.
This level of cynicism has characterized Republican political algebra since the notorious Southern Strategy was cobbled together in the late 1960s. Racial resentment runs so deep in America that a solid majority of white voters can be manipulated by a thinly-veiled racial pitch.
You can’t be too gross about it, of course, no one outside a few counties in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia wants to be accused of overt, “I love the Nigra, in his place” bigotry. But whenever Romney contrasts Obama’s entitlement nation with the personal responsibility America dear to the hearts of Republicans he’s fishing in the slough of racial resentment.
When white voters think welfare, they think black, and Romney’s handlers know it. The bogus complaint that Obama has scaled back work requirements in the welfare-to-work system doesn’t have to be true. To most white swing voters, sending out checks no-questions-asked is just the sort of thing a black president would do for his kind.
This is called “dog whistle” politics, the theory being that only conservative whites can hear the high-pitched whine of racial resentment. Although, from a Republican perspective, it hardly matters, the ears of African Americans have become highly attuned to dog whistle politics over the years, and for good reason. If you’re black, that ear-splitting siren always spells trouble.
This year the squeal is so loud and persistent that zero percent of African American voters fail to hear it. It’s white moderates, the kind who generally vote for Democrats, who remain deaf to the whistle, and so long as that’s true the Southern Strategy marches on.
Friends of Justice 
when i think Welfare i dont think black… theres plenty of people on welfare for the right reasons, and theres plenty of bottom feeding losers living off of it. The real question is when do we start eliminating these peoples benefits to just enough for them not to starve to death?
This entire article encites racial difference, its kind of pointless
also no matter the color of the recipient Obama does buy votes, with government programs We (you and i) can not afford.
That’s the point, Cory, the existence of racial difference is patently obvious, just look at the numbers. I didn’t “encite” that difference, I am simply trying to account for it.
Alan
When you create an insulting category like Kikes, niggers, sluts or “bottom feeding losers” you shut down empathy and pave the way for dehumanizing public policy. Welfare dependency is a legitimate issue, but people don’t become welfare dependent because they are bad people. It begins with a lack of access to and experience with paying work. To suggest that “those people” are just that way doesn’t help much.
Cory, what examples would you give of President Obama “buying votes” with government programs? Would it be the fact that under Obamacare young people up to the age of 26 can now stay on their parents’ insurance? Or that children with pre-existing conditions can now not be denied health insurance? These two example to me are clear ways in which policy (Obamacare) has truly helped people who need the support. I call that compassion. You call it “buying votes.” If we follow your logic, then we would have to say that President George Bush’s Medicare Part D program, which helps seniors with prescriptions drugs (and by the way was not paid for and simply added to the deficit), was, in fact, not a real attempt by Bush to help out seniors, but was him “buying their votes.” Really?
Romney’s cynical handlers were hoping that the sight of their man being booed and heckled, however politely, by a room of black opinion leaders would help his standing with the white electorate.
How do you know this? Sounds like just “more” division to me. Sounds like Romney may not be the only one with a racism problem.
As I have gotten older I have figured out blacks have the 3
attributes to keep them democrats forever. They are dumb
and uneducated (there is a difference) they are sexually repugnant
and they are violent (blacks cause half of new aids cases and cause
half of the violent crime) IT’S ESTIMATED BLACKS RAPE MORE
MEN/BOYS BEHIND BARS THAN THEY DO WOMEN IN THE CIVIL
POPULATION. THEY TRULY ARE THE CHILDREN OF SATAN.
I really do curse the filthy JEWISH SLAVER SCUM (WHOSE
DESCENDANTS NOW RUN THE DEM PARTY) FOR BRINGING
ALL THE AFRICAN SLAVES TO THE NEW WORLD. BUT OF
COURSE AS NIGGGERS KNOW A JEWW WILL DO ANYTHING
FOR POWER AND MONEY.
I THINK IT WILL TAKE ABOUT A MONTH FOR NIGGERS TO
FIGURE OUT THEY ARE IN HELL WHEN THEY GET THERE!
THAT’S ALL HAVE A GREAT NIGHT
John: Check out the response from Bobby Jones the Seventh and you will get a feel for the mindset the Republicans are targeting. Bobby the 7th is an extreme case, of course, but divide his extreme, open, unapologetic racism by ten and you still have a receptive audience.
Is this a sarcastic caricature of racism, or is it the real thing? I know some racists who wouldn’t even come up to 10% of this vitriol, which is why I wonder if it’s an intentional caricature.
No, I’m sure this guy is a true believer. I suspect using hate speech is a bit of a turn on for him, which explains why his syntax suggests growing excitement as his post progresses.