Michael Steele was incompetent. We need to fire incompetents regardless of race.
You have somewhat of a point about “window-dressing,” not that the Dems don’t trot out the Diversity Parade at every opportunity. [Neither would Barack Obama have been nominated on his qualifications alone, as they were practically non-existent.*] But I was thinking more of black conservatives who are genuinely beloved by Republicans such as Tom Sowell, and who wish there were a lot more like him.
And I think someday there will be. Affiliation with the Democrats is almost as much a black cultural thing as a political one–until the disastrous nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964, the GOP was competitive—Eisenhower got 39 percent of the vote in 1956 and Richard Nixon received 32 percent of the black vote in 1960.
We shall see.
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*”And the man once called the “first black president” remains deeply wounded by allegations that he made racially insensitive remarks during the campaign, like dismissing Obama’s South Carolina win by comparing it with Jesse Jackson’s victories there in the 1980s.
“None of them ever really took seriously the race rap,” he told me. “They knew it was politics. I had one minister in Texas in the general election come up and put his arm around me.” This was an Obama supporter. “And he came up, threw his arm around me and said, ‘You’ve got to forgive us for that race deal.’ He said, ‘That was out of line.’ But he said, ‘You know, we wanted to win real bad.’ And I said, ‘I got no problem with that.’ I said it’s fine; it’s O.K. And we laughed about it and we went on.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/magazine/31clinton-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
But that was a one-off, a freak. Back to business, and if Black America wises up, it’ll go back to having friends on both sides of the aisle, not just one.

Sorry Tom, the key is still policies. They have to change policies, and they can’t do it without alienating their base. Ain’t gonna happen.

I didn’t say the people themselves were tokens Tom, I said the GOP treats them that way, and provided an example of how they did so in one rather famous case. Nice attempt at derailing tho.

You intimated it. Your own reply is a didge. If you could have answered the question, you’d have won the debate. But you didn’t and you didn’t.
You may find this of interest–by a conservative but of little comfort to Republicans.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/354265/plantation-theory-kevin-d-williamson
I enjoyed Cornell West nailing race-baiter Al Sharpton as part of the “rent-a-Negro phenomenon on MSNBC,” but the larger point is why Black America doesn’t share the faith of white conservative America in free markets. It rather makes your argument in a principled and substantive way rather than cheap accusations of tokenism and cynicism.
It is not surprising that blacks have less faith in the productive and transformative power of the free-market economy than do whites. Black Americans were for some centuries treated as an economic commodity themselves and were systematically excluded from full participation in the economy for generations after that. As horrific as slavery is, it may in fact be the latter experience that has undercut African Americans’ faith in capitalism. Slavery is an alien experience, but being passed over for a job or a contract, or being denied a loan, and suspecting that one’s race has something to do with the fact, is not ancient history. And while accounts of discrimination against black Americans in the marketplace may be exaggerated, they are not without basis in fact.
That African Americans’ attitudes toward economic issues are strongly influenced by their historical experience of economic exclusion is consistent with other aspects of black life beyond political-party affiliation. For example, blacks are notably risk-averse when it comes to personal financial decisions. Blacks are much less likely to invest in stocks than are similarly situated whites. They invest relatively less in risk-involved instruments such as stocks and bonds and more in risk-mitigating instruments such as life insurance. (That is one of the reasons that affluent black households often end up less wealthy than white households with identical incomes and education levels. Women exhibit similarly risk-averse investing behavior with the same result.) Risk aversion is the reason that many Americans — black, white, and other — are made anxious by proposed changes to the welfare system, even when they themselves are unlikely ever to need it. They view the welfare state as (that inevitable phrase) a safety net.
And that is what the plantation theory gets wrong. Democrats are not buying black votes with welfare benefits. Democrats appeal to blacks, to other minority groups, and — most significant — to women with rhetoric and policies that promise the mitigation of risk…
Exc stuff, on which we might be able to both agree.

Oh, and thanks for nothing, President Obama.
Public attitudes about race relations have plummeted since the historic election of President Barack Obama, according to a new poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal.
Only 52 percent of whites and 38 percent of blacks have a favorable opinion of race relations in the country, according to the poll, which has tracked race relations since 1994 and was conducted in mid-July by Hart Research Associations and Public Opinion Strategies.
That’s a sharp drop from the beginning of Obama’s first term, when 79 percent of whites and 63 percent of blacks held a favorable view of American race relations.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/25/race-relations-have-plummeted-since-obama-took-office-according-to-poll/#ixzz2a5hknGa6