The Republican rout in November presents an opportunity to learn from past mistakes and to rebuild the conservative movement. It is time to start anew and it should include expanding minority outreach.
The results of the 2008 election are a stinging indictment of a party that has lost its way and has adopted the big-government, high-deficit governing approach they used to lampoon. Although 78 percent of conservatives voted for John McCain, 60 percent of moderates opted for Barack Obama, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Media Research. A party without core convictions does not inspire much confidence or enthusiasm.
The conservative movement has also failed to evolve with America's changing demographics. It was evident in the primaries that the Republicans were out of step with the times. Their presidential candidates were white males. By contrast, Democrats garnered the excitement of an evolving nation: A woman, a black male and a Hispanic were in the running. By the time the Republican Party caught the wave in the general election campaign and launched Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin onto the national stage, it was too little, too late.
Exit polls of the presidential race tell the story: New voters opted for Mr. Obama by a margin of 68 percent; Democrats captured 66 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 and won 54 percent of voters between 30 and 39; women chose the Democratic challenger by a margin of 56 percent; 64 percent of Latino men and 68 percent of Latino women voted for Mr. Obama; and 95 percent of black men and 96 percent of black women voted for the Democratic nominee. Mr. McCain won a majority of the white evangelical vote, but 77 percent of Jewish voters and 53 percent of Catholics selected Mr. Obama. In a nutshell, America's new, young and minority voters helped put Mr. Obama in the White House.
The Obama, Hillary Clinton and Palin phenomena demonstrate that factors like gender and race matter to the electorate. The conservative movement needs to make zealous and effective efforts to reach out to women and minorities and to invest in leaders that can appeal to them.
Blanquita Cullum, a political analyst for WOAI radio in San Antonio and a Republican activist said in an interview that the Republican Party did not win the majority of the Hispanic vote because "they didn't ask for it." She said that "they had no strategy to reach out to the Hispanic community." When she asked many Hispanic Republican activists what their role would be during the campaign, they said they had not been approached or asked to participate. Essentially, Hispanic Republicans were "in disarray" and were by and large "ignored," she said.
Ms. Cullum said that the so-called "immigration debate backlash" was not a decisive factor. "Republicans must show Hispanics respect," she said. "Respect is very different from acceptance. Respect means letting Hispanics know 'you are viable, you are credible, you have gifts and talents; we need you, we want you to join us.'" She said that conservatives need to do much better in investing in minority leaders and validating the contributions of minorities to American society. Ms. Cullum said that the same problems that Republicans face in reaching out to Hispanics, is also true of how they deal with other minorities.
She also suggested that conservatives should emulate the Obama campaign. Mr. Obama "used an effective spokesperson like New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and he did not treat Hispanics as a monolith. Mr. Obama was very sophisticated in his approach. He knew how to target specific areas." She said that Mr. Obama's victory is a wake-up call: "It shakes people and makes them think about how we are doing things."
The first thing conservatives must do is to ask ourselves why we have failed to attract the young, minorities and women. This deficiency in our movement is not the result only of the last few years, but of the last few decades: The movement is falling behind the times; we are failing to entice key sectors of the public to our cause. Minority efforts that are attempted are sporadic, superficial and transparent efforts to temporarily get votes, rather than a long-term strategy to build profound relationships between these groups and the conservative movement.
Out of the rubble, a new conservative movement must be born.
-Grace Vuoto is the Executive Director of the Edmund Burke Institute
