The monolithic pro-Democratic black vote is a clear and present danger to America.
As recently as 1956, the GOP captured 39 percent of the black vote. If Republicans can seize just 20 or 30 percent of the black vote, the Democratic Party -- and its ability to pull the country to the left -- could be stopped, if not reversed.
"The 'black vote'?" I said to a white Republican politician who asked my advice. "I'll tell you how to go after it, but you won't do it."
"Try me," he said.
Politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, treat blacks like children. When a Republican addresses a black audience, you can make book on how long it takes before he refers to Martin Luther King Jr. Either he marched with King or his father did, or the next-door neighbor of his barber's nephew used to mow the Rev. King's father's lawn.
As long as the black vote is a referendum on empathy, compassion and "civil rights," Republicans lose. Nobody can "feel your pain" like a spread-the-wealth, entitlement-expanding, "close-the-inequality-gap" leftist.
"The struggle for civil rights is over," I told him. "The good guys won. The battle now is against wrongheaded 'compassionate' policies. But the most important issue -- by far -- is education."
Republicans need to ask blacks, "Are you better off?" Are blacks better off sending their children to assigned government schools -- as demanded by the teachers unions and the Democratic Party?
Inner-city parents know that urban government-run schools have a nearly 50 percent dropout rate and that even the kids who graduate often cannot read, write or compute at grade level. They know that poor teachers end up getting transferred to urban schools, where other parents are less likely to object to their incompetence. This is known as the "dance of the lemons."
Urban government-run schools are often violent. But because the school funding is based on average daily attendance, principals are reluctant to kick out bad, disruptive kids. Bad, disruptive kids help make bad schools.
Urban parents want choice. They want the right to send their kids to schools where they have a better chance of success. In California, a statewide referendum on vouchers failed, but it passed among black and Hispanic inner-city voters. Teachers unions, whose political contributions go almost entirely to the Democratic Party, vehemently oppose vouchers. Yet teachers are more likely than non-teachers to send their own children to private schools.
