jct74
08-04-2014, 09:55 PM
RAND PAUL'S AUDACIOUS OUTREACH
He wants to change the way Republicans court black voters. But first he has to sell his party on the new approach.
BY RONALD BROWNSTEIN
Sen. Rand Paul, a likely 2016 Republican presidential contender, is doing something new, and even potentially boundary-breaking, in his outreach to African-Americans.
Paul's innovation isn't his clogged calendar of appearances before black groups like the National Urban League, where he spoke last week. Ever since black voters decisively shifted their allegiance to Democrats after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, there have always been some GOP leaders—from George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller through Jack Kemp (the most passionate advocate) and George W. Bush—who tried to woo them back.
What's new is the way Paul is courting African-Americans. He has moved beyond the economic arguments that anchored those previous outreach efforts to embrace criminal-justice reform with a passion unprecedented in modern Republican politics. Few Democrats, in fact, have matched the fervor of Paul's case against drug laws that have disproportionately incarcerated minority men. While reform isn't imminent, he could be helping to clear the space that will ultimately produce it. "We haven't really seen a Republican, and I can't think of many Democratic senators, who [has] been this out front in trying to reform the criminal-justice system," says Jeremy Haile, federal advocacy counsel for The Sentencing Project, a group that advocates for rethinking sentencing rules.
...
read more:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/political-connections/rand-paul-s-audacious-outreach-20140801
He wants to change the way Republicans court black voters. But first he has to sell his party on the new approach.
BY RONALD BROWNSTEIN
Sen. Rand Paul, a likely 2016 Republican presidential contender, is doing something new, and even potentially boundary-breaking, in his outreach to African-Americans.
Paul's innovation isn't his clogged calendar of appearances before black groups like the National Urban League, where he spoke last week. Ever since black voters decisively shifted their allegiance to Democrats after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, there have always been some GOP leaders—from George Romney and Nelson Rockefeller through Jack Kemp (the most passionate advocate) and George W. Bush—who tried to woo them back.
What's new is the way Paul is courting African-Americans. He has moved beyond the economic arguments that anchored those previous outreach efforts to embrace criminal-justice reform with a passion unprecedented in modern Republican politics. Few Democrats, in fact, have matched the fervor of Paul's case against drug laws that have disproportionately incarcerated minority men. While reform isn't imminent, he could be helping to clear the space that will ultimately produce it. "We haven't really seen a Republican, and I can't think of many Democratic senators, who [has] been this out front in trying to reform the criminal-justice system," says Jeremy Haile, federal advocacy counsel for The Sentencing Project, a group that advocates for rethinking sentencing rules.
...
read more:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/political-connections/rand-paul-s-audacious-outreach-20140801