Word: blacks
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...Black Republicans often boast that theirs is the Party of Lincoln and that it was the GOP during Reconstruction that propelled several blacks into elected office. Now, however, Obama is being cast as the new Lincoln. And though George W. Bush won a surprisingly large 11% of the national black vote in 2004 - partly by appealing to African Americans' fundamentally conservative social sensibilities - the numbers have once again becoming overwhelmingly Democratic, extending a trend that began in the 1960s. This year, 95% of blacks cast their vote for Obama. (See pictures of how Obama's election energized the heart...
...Scoggins, 63, has been a Republican for nearly 40 years. Yet on Nov. 4, he voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time. Scoggins is president of the 1,000-member Republicans for Black Empowerment, a Washington-based group that primarily aims to mobilize black conservatives. For months, he struggled over whether to support John McCain. The selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as McCain's vice-presidential running mate "was the nail in the coffin. She didn't exude any intellectual acuity," he says. Scoggins says his support for Obama wasn't just out of a sense...
Renee Amoore believes she knows the way to make the party more appealing to African Americans. The only black woman with a prime-time speaking role from the podium at this year's Republican National Convention, Amoore, 55, a suburban Philadelphia business executive, says that GOP outreach to blacks should be simple: you just have to ask. But, she says, "You have to do it 24/7. You can't woo people only during election time." She has urged Republicans to buy advertisements promoting Republican candidates on black-oriented television and radio stations, locally and nationally. She also runs the Pennsylvania...
Michael Steele does not diminish the power of the Obama victory. "As a black man, of course I am very proud of his accomplishment," Steele says. "It is at once uplifting - of not only a people but a nation - and sobering in light of the work that remains to be done to address the systemic erosion of black wealth, health and opportunity." But Steele predicts that Obama as President will find it difficult to appease his more liberal supporters as he is forced to moderate views on the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other issues...
...chairman in January, he will move swiftly to temper the party's tone, using the model of Ronald Reagan, who, he says, "made it cool to be a conservative." But one of Steele's more daunting mandates will to be to broaden the GOP's base of black voters. "I'll tell local chairmen, 'If you want to be chairman under my leadership, don't think this is a country-club atmosphere where we sit around drinking wine and eating cheese and talking amongst ourselves. If you don't want to drill down and build coalitions in minority communities, then...