GOP's New Goal: A Less-White Party

Republicans are starting to show some color again. The midterm election that swept Republicans into control of both houses of Congress also brought in the party's largest group of black lawmakers since Reconstruction: three.

Hey, it's a start.

They include Sen. Tim Scott, who was appointed to the Senate in 2012 but became South Carolina's first elected black senator -- and the South's first since Reconstruction -- in November.

In the House, Rep. Mia Love, a Haitian-American Mormon from Utah became the first black Republican woman ever elected to Congress. Rep. Will Hurd, a former CIA officer, became the first black Republican from Texas ever to win a seat in Congress.

Those three victories gave Chairman Reince Priebus something tangible to celebrate at the Republican National Committee's third annual "Black Trailblazers Luncheon," which I attended on the eve of Abraham Lincoln's birthday.

Priebus launched the luncheons in Washington D.C.'s historic Howard Theater as part of his multimillion-dollar effort to woo black, Hispanic and Asian voters after Mitt Romney's racially lopsided defeat in the 2012 presidential race.

The program was lovely, the choir was spirited, the lunch was tasty and the speeches were mercifully brief.

Yet conspicuously absent were those who, in my view, have presented the biggest obstacle to the party's outreach efforts.

I'm talking about the element that Colin Powell, who still calls himself a Republican despite endorsing President Barack Obama, described in January 2013 as "a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party."

"What I mean by that is they still sort of look down on minorities," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

For that, Powell felt a backlash from some of his fellow Republicans that resembled the rebuke some liberals give to criticism of President Barack Obama. Yet Powell offered insight into why, as Harvard assistant public policy professor Leah Wright Rigueur writes, black Republicans on national stage tend to be viewed with "nearly the same disbelief and surprise as ... a unicorn sighting.

Yet, as the title of her new book, "The Loneliness of the Black Conservative: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power," suggests, Rigueur believes black Republicans deserve more respect -- from fellow blacks and fellow Republicans.

Easy to forget how the "Party of Lincoln" used to be a progressive abolitionist party, as popular among African-Americans as the Democrats -- then the party of slavery, the KKK and Jim Crow segregation -- are today.

Hispanic and Asian-American voters followed a similar track, turning away from the GOP so dramatically in 2012 that the nation's changing racial-ethnic demographics threaten the party's future as a national force.

Parties do change and so do their relationships with various factions of voters.

Can relations between the GOP and voters of color change back?

Taking a close look at the long history and diverse beliefs of black Republicans, Rigueur's rigorous research confirms what many other analysts already have detected:

The party's resurrection among voters of color will take many years, if it's going to happen. It most likely will begin as most politics do, at the local level where Republicans tend to score victories as pragmatic problem-solvers, more than as ideological lightning rods.

Successful examples that I have written about in recent decades have included former Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan, former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Rigueur sees three major obstacles to improved minority outreach. One, the divide in political beliefs has widened as the GOP has moved farther right. Two, bad memories of an often hostile history have mounted on both sides since the mid-1960s.

And, three, many minorities view the party's "colorblind" approach as insensitive to their history and lived experiences. That insensitivity, writes Rigueur, is "sorely exacerbated by the fact that Republicans rarely consider race except to use it as an antagonism."

That's the "dark vein" that Powell was talking about.

The GOP does not have to "become" Democrats to win black votes, Rigueur suggests. It only has to offer a broad-based message that takes the views of conservatism and minorities into account without pitting them against one another.

Right. Abraham Lincoln, another great Republican, tried that, but couldn't prevent the Civil War. I hope we Americans have learned better from our past mistakes.

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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.