-
4. The Republican Party and the Problem of Diversity, 1968–1975
- Vanderbilt University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Chapter 4 The Republican Party and the Problem of Diversity, 1968–1975 Catherine E. Rymph i n july 2005, republican national Committee (rnC) chair ken Mehlman delivered a widely covered address to the national association for the advancement of Colored People (naaCP) convention in Milwaukee. in it, he apologized for his party’s electoral strategy on race. over the last three decades, Mehlman noted, “some republicans gave up on winning the african american vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. i am here today as the republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.”1 This statement of regret referred to goP efforts from the late sixties onward to woo traditionally Democratic voters through promising to slow the pace of black civil rights advancements and appealing to white southerners in particular through use of coded (rather than explicit) racial appeals.2 Historians disagree in their assessment of how important this “Southern Strategy” was to richard nixon’s election as president in 1968 and to republican resurgence thereafter.3 yet the charge remains that over a period of some forty years the goP benefited from unsavory racial politics that eschewed any credible appeal to black voters. Mehlman’s disavowal of the Southern Strategy undoubtedly reflected concern about the goP’s lack of support among black voters and the political benefits of “racial polarization” in a demographically changing United States. The apparent dangers for the party were underlined by its defeat in the 2008 presidential election . The McCain/Palin presidential ticket attracted less support than its Democratic counterpart from virtually every demographic group other than older white voters.4 This outcome resurrected intraparty debate about how to craft a new winning strategy. For republicans of similar outlook to Mehlman, distancing their party from the Southern Strategy that had once been seen as the way forward was essential to its renewal. Mehlman, of course, was not the first republican to see racial homogeneity as a potential liability. There were those who recognized such pragmatic concerns in the late sixties and early seventies—when the demographic transformation of the next forty years was hard to foresee. The origins of the Southern Strategy are convention76 ally associated with nixon’s 1968 campaign. yet the goP in the nixon years was by no means unanimous in its support for this approach to party building. Some republicans preferred to reach out to african americans and other groups that were underrepresented in the party. nixon himself had declared in a 1971 speech that the goP should be the “Party of the open Door.” His use of this slogan was targeted at voters of different political loyalties, but some republicans interpreted it as reinforcement of their efforts to attract more racial minorities.5 one obvious target for reform—both symbolic and substantive—was the “face” of the goP: that is, its official organizations. The ultimate failure of efforts to transform the party’s makeup, however, illuminated the difficulties of diversifying an institution rooted in the very ideology of individualism. in august 1972, during the republican national Convention, black republican wilbur Colom of washington, DC, testified before the Committee on Contests as it considered the merits of delegate challenges based on the homogeneity of state delegations to the convention. He was asked whether he, as an african american , felt unwelcome in the republican Party. “Very much so,” he replied, surely to the dismay of the committee. “The Democrats are constantly knocking on your door with stuff trying to get you to do something for them, right. trying to get you to vote. you feel welcome plus you see people that you identify with. i see young people, i see Black people and i see other people i feel who speak for me in the Democrat Party where i don’t see that here.” Frustrated as he may have been with the republicans, Colom nonetheless believed working within the goP made sense because, as he saw it, african americans could not be well served by a Democratic Party that had come to take them for granted. “we [african americans] have to have an alternative,” Colom insisted. “i think the republican Party can become that alternative if it makes that substantial effort.”6 Colom presented his concerns in terms of what was best politically for african americans. Meanwhile, there were plenty of republicans in the early seventies who also insisted that reaching out to african americans would be good for the goP. They believed that the...