Romney Pandering to Racists?

If you know anything about American politics, you will probably know that the Republican Party is not very popular amongst minorities. For the past number of decade’s minorities, particularly blacks have flocked to the Democrats. In 2008 polls show that John McCain won 31% of the Latino vote and only 4% of the African-American vote. You would think that this abysmal performance amongst minorities could never again be matched, but Romney seems likely to actually do worse than McCain. Amongst Latino voters, Romney is polling at 26%, five points below McCain in 2008 but amongst African-American voters he manages to do worse, polling at a jaw-dropping 0%. That’s right, 0%.  

This is disastrous for the Romney campaign, according to research by Ronald Brownstein at the National Journal; if white voters make up the same proportion of the electorate as they did in 2008 then Mitt Romney needs to win 61% of the white vote! The graphic below shows just how difficult this is going to be, not since 1984 when Reagan won the overall election by 20 points have so many whites voted Republican. The only modern election to beat Reagan was Nixon, when he won the overall election by 25 points in 1972.

So basically Mitt Romney has a choice, attempt to improve his standing amongst minorities or try and get more of the white vote. It would appear Romney is going for the latter. In America the issue of welfare is a racially charged one, when you talk about welfare you find it is connected to minorities. In a recent political advert the Romney campaign asserted that Obama had ended welfare to work requirements and that welfare would be given to people regardless. This could not be further from the truth; Obama has not ended welfare to work requirements. In fact the only change in welfare that Obama has done is to allow states more flexibility with their own systems. This was under pressure from Republican governors and something that Mitt Romney asked from the federal government when he was governor of Massachusetts. Romney has refused to remove the advert and actually put out another advert defending the blatant lies espoused by the first one.

This is not the only way Romney is trying to win over a certain section of white voters, in a campaign speech in Michigan last week Romney decided he should appeal to the birthers in American politics. In case you don’t know a birther is someone who believes that Obama was born outside of the USA and therefore is not legally allowed to be president of the US.  The fully quote of his pandering is as follows:

“Now I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born. Ann was born in Henry Ford Hospital, I was born in Harper Hospital. No-one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate; they know that this is the place that we were born and raised.” *cue applause*

If this was a joke, it was both in poor taste and terribly delivered. If he had stopped after saying birth certificate, in my mind he may have gotten away with it. It’s actually the final part of the whole statement that I find the most disturbing, the final part would indicate to me that he is being serious. I believe that it is a coherent pander to the birthers within his party and without.

Whatever the outcome election is, Romney has brought the issues of race into the field much more than in 2008. Despite the fact that 2008 gave America the first black president, Romney is ensuring that this issue of race won’t go away. It may hurt his chances of winning in November.