A new study of blacks and their voting patterns finds that nothing the Republican Party does, even nominating African-American GOP candidates, works to win them over.
“Historical legacies provide deeply rooted ties between blacks and the Democratic Party,” said the study in the authoritative journal Political Research Quarterly. “These ties may simply render it impossible for Republicans — black or otherwise — to move public opinion or mobilize among blacks,” it added.
The study, provided to the Washington Examiner, searched through the demographic details of 3,300 African-American voters in the 2010 election, when the GOP had nearly three dozen black House candidates running, part of the Republican Party’s push to attract minority voters.
But the authors, political scientists from Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Chicago, found it didn’t help. “Republican efforts in recruiting black candidates were ultimately unsuccessful at mobilizing black voters,” the study said.
Since 1981, the GOP has focused on expanding the black vote beyond single digits — and mostly failed.
The study did find that having a black Republican in the race pushed more African-Americans to the polls, but mostly for Democrats. The highest turnout, 75 percent, occurred when both party candidates were black, followed by when only the Democrat was black, at 73 percent, and 62 percent when only the Republican was black.
“While black citizens do distinguish black Republican candidates from non-black Republican candidates, they also distinguish black Republicans from black Democrats,” the study said. “Black citizens appear to conclude that they do not share common political values with Republicans, whether black or not. As a consequence, black Republican candidates simply do not evoke the same response from black citizens as black Democratic candidates.”
POT LEGALIZATION PROMPTS NEW APP TO AVOID PO-PO
With the growing legalization of marijuana, baby boomers are getting into pot tourism, and with it the paranoia that every car on the road holds a state cop ready to arrest them for crossing into an anti-drug state.
Now there’s an app for that.
Washington journalist David Coia has developed “Potlines,” a sort of Waze for marijuana users that sends an alert to a cellular phone when the user crosses into an anti-pot state.
“I just saw the need for it,” Coia said.
But not because he’s a regular user. Coia, who said he last smoked a joint in 1988, was growing concerned about the overpopulation in the legal system of people charged with drug possession when the idea came to him.
“When you cross state lines, Potlines tells you what the rules are,” Coia said. “This helps you be more conscious of your surroundings and speed and warns you to slow down,” he said of his 99-cent app developed by his firm 21st Century AMP.
A REAGAN FIRST: 81 TOP AIDES RECALL THE GIPPER
It seems like such an obvious idea, but the model for the new book, Reagan Remembered, has never been done with presidents before. Instead of another history, it features the recollections from 81 of his top aides.
The idea came up two years ago over lunch among former Reagan White House chief of staff James A. Baker, former Attorney General Edwin Meese and Gilbert A. Robinson, a top Reagan aide and ambassador.
Reagan Remembered was published last week by Beaufort Books of New York.
“It was fun,” said Meese, who penned the introduction.
Some stories offer rare insight to Reagan. “There were things in his character that I didn’t know about,” confessed Robinson.
One example: Reagan was often criticized for skipping church, but he privately was a “very prayerful man,” Robinson said. When, as governor of California, he was told of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Reagan immediately prayed, “bowed, with his lips moving,” the book reports.
Former President George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s vice president, recalled seeing his boss wiping up water on the bathroom floor of his hospital room after being shot by assassin John Hinckley Jr. Reagan didn’t want to impose on the nurses. “I’m enough of a nuisance to them as it is,” he said.
QUOTE
“I remember looking out of the car windows and not being able to see anything.”
GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina on her steamy third date with husband Frank after he predicted she would one day run a big tech company.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
