It's My Party, But I Don't Feel Part of It

With those words Reeves expressed what many of us have felt over the years -- and felt again during the recent campaign as we listened to racially coded Republican ads and speeches aimed at scaring working-class and rural white voters about Obama. Reeves expressed why so many of us, including me, ended up, after struggling with our consciences, supporting and voting for the Illinois senator.

After losing our votes this time around, the question is whether the GOP will learn from its failings or continue to compound them. Rumor and e-mail has it that some black conservatives are angry with black Republicans such as Gen. Colin Powell who publicly backed Obama and have issued calls to "throw out" those who did so. But instead of doling out retribution, the party would be better off reflecting on its failings vis-a-vis African Americans, and on the transformation of Abraham Lincoln's Grand Old Party from one that freed the slaves, stood with the suffragists in the early 20th century and helped pass both the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts when Southern Democrats would not yield to a party that now appeals to the old Confederacy and a few mountain states out West.

How can the GOP bring black voters back into the fold? Asked that question on National Public Radio in October, Steele, now a candidate for the RNC chairmanship, offered a simple formula:

"Talk to them. Actually engage the black community where they are. Stop thinking you're going to get by by having a handshake and a photo-op, and actually go and listen to black folks in the issues and the concerns they have and . . . make them important to the [party's] overall strategy."

Reeves, who's now national director of state and local development for the RNC, has a similar view. The party, he said, has to "identify, elevate and support blacks who currently work within the party at the local level long before Election Day. We must embrace the talent that the party has now, those who have earned their stripes."

But black Republicans, he stressed, "have a responsibility, too. We need to be effecting change in our own local communities. We need to run for local and state party chairmanships, we need to be there when the platforms are being decided, and when candidates are being selected to run for office."

There are other steps the party can take as it regroups for the future. Republicans need to go to black churches, colleges and other organizations to make the case for the party as a viable option for African Americans. It should mentor and nurture young black Republicans on college campuses, teaching them to canvass, providing paid internships and encouraging them to attend party rules and platform meetings, where real political power resides. It should introduce elected black state and local officials to the national donor base to help them build their coffers for future elections. It should recruit blacks in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic and in urban districts, offering a Marshall Plan of sorts to rebuild our cities, encourage entrepreneurship and small business start-ups and promote lower taxes for job creation.

And the party can make better use of black veterans of past administrations, just as it does of white Republicans who get recycled and advanced in each new administration -- people like former Pennsylvania Republican committee deputy chairman Renee Amoore; former Atwater aide and George H.W. Bush appointee David Byrd; former George W. Bush appointee Clarence Carter; Sam Cornelius, former chairman of the National Black Republican Council; Thelma Duggin, former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan; and former George H.W. Bush aide Joe Watkins.

Diversity is a good thing. Republicans have to stop allowing ourselves to be accused of voter suppression in every campaign. And let's grow the vote in nontraditional areas the same way Obama did in rural and suburban white America.

In the final analysis, what the American people showed in this election is that they're looking for a more thoughtful and soulful politics. The Republican Party has to find its soul again. Only then will it be ready to lead and govern in a way that attracts a broad spectrum of people to it and makes them want to stay with it for generations to come.

sanelson@politicalintersection.com

Sophia A. Nelson, a former Republican congressional staffer and committee counsel, is a lawyer and the editor of politicalintersectionblog.com.