The Republican Party recently made national headlines with their asseveration to appropriate $10 million this year to recruit more of the African American, Hispanic and Asian electorate who voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the 2012 presidential elections.
Some would quickly surmise that it was an opportunity needlessly squandered but this campaign comes a few years too late. President Obama was a wounded political figure during the latter part of his first term and disenchantment and disillusionment with the 44th president of the United States was at an all-time high among the black voting block.
African Americans, contrary to popular but erroneous beliefs, have not always been such a monolithic voting block when it comes to political parties. As much as a third of blacks were Republicans as late as the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration in the 1950s, according to TheFiscalTimes.com.
In fact, the absolute reversal of today’s political climate was true. Blacks, as we now know, were almost exclusively Republican during the days of Abraham Lincoln. And that lasted all the way up to the World War II era of Franklin D. Roosevelt when he implemented the New Deal and other policies that (indirectly) benefited blacks. Then, of course, we became solidly, if not solely Democratic.
If the GOP wants to recruit blacks back into the party in considerable numbers, there are certain things they can do other than throw money at the problem, something that the GOP has famously chanted for decades.
