Prometheus 6

After this election, they've been cut back to their core constituency: evangelicals, racists (NOT the same thing, which is another reason they won't cohere) and paid representatives. They have three constituencies they can attempt to assimilate: Black folks (HAH!), Latino folk (who blew them off because the party's immigration rhetoric threatens the legalest of them) and the white folk that just told them they failed.

Really pursuing the Black constituencies would lose them the racist/Solid South vote immediately; meanwhile, with the party's history it would take decades of honest good will to make up for that loss. Given that fear of loss overwhelms the prospect of gain among them, I simply don't expect them to even try.

Steele's television ads deserve a page in the annals of American politics. Shot against a white background, they had the minimalist look and post-postmodern sensibility of those commercials for Apple or the Gap. They managed to deliver all image and no substance -- and, yes, I meant to use those absolute terms "all" and "no.'' Speaking to the camera, Steele told voters he knew what they were thinking -- but didn't specify what that might be. He promised to be a different kind of senator -- again, no hint of what that might mean. About the only thing the ads firmly established was that Steele likes puppies.

Diversity In Cannon Fodder
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, November 14, 2006; A31

It didn't work. The Republican Party put up three high-profile black candidates to try to weaken the bond between the Democratic Party and African Americans, and all three got slammed by the voters, big-time. After a week of reflection, maybe Ken Blackwell, Lynn Swann and Michael Steele have come to understand that they were never intended to be viable candidates. From the start, they were more like cannon fodder.

There is no reason Republicans can't someday win a big share of the African American vote. All the GOP has to do is adopt policies that most black Americans believe will work to their advantage, rather than leave them behind. Oh, and Republicans also need to drop all those coded appeals to white racists, such as the infamous "Playboy party" ad that helped defeat Democrat Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee.

Instead of making a legitimate play for the black vote, Republicans convinced themselves that tokenism would be enough. Judging from last Tuesday's returns, they didn't convince anybody else....

Michael Steele's run for the Senate was another story. Steele, Maryland's lieutenant governor, was recruited by the White House to run in what has historically been a Democratic stronghold. He was another sacrificial lamb, like Blackwell and Swann, an African American face meant as a demonstration to voters that the Republican Party had finally become serious about diversity.

Then funny things started happening. Steele's white opponent, Rep. Ben Cardin, ran an unimaginative and plodding campaign. Steele, on the other hand, proved to be a natural on the trail.

Steele's television ads deserve a page in the annals of American politics. Shot against a white background, they had the minimalist look and post-postmodern sensibility of those commercials for Apple or the Gap. They managed to deliver all image and no substance -- and, yes, I meant to use those absolute terms "all" and "no.'' Speaking to the camera, Steele told voters he knew what they were thinking -- but didn't specify what that might be. He promised to be a different kind of senator -- again, no hint of what that might mean. About the only thing the ads firmly established was that Steele likes puppies.

Republican strategists looked at the numbers and saw that Steele might actually win as long as he kept pretending not to be a Republican. Several prominent black Democrats, piqued that there were no African Americans at the top of the ticket in Maryland, endorsed Steele. Some analysts saw the race as a toss-up.

Last week Steele lost by 10 points. That's better than Blackwell and Swann did, but still a landslide.