SocraticGadfly: Where will you find black Republicans?

October 02, 2019

Where will you find black Republicans?

Not a joke but it does sound like a set-up for a great punchline.

First, they do exist, as past and present members of Comgress attest. But, contra Allen West, Tim Scott, Will Hurd and J.C. Watts, they neither live in the part of the country, the South, nor have all the right background, to make them the most likely of black Republicans.

By part of the country, the area of country around the Utah of former Congresscritter Mia Love is where you should look, according to political scientist and data scientist Allen Downey.

But, Love doesn't fully fit the bill either, unless you consider Mormons to be born-again Protestants. (That said, she is a convert to Mormonism.)

Otherwise, as far as her overall background, as someone arguably less wingnut-lite even than Hurd, if the GOP wants to have a future with African-Americans, it will have to be with people like her.

But, until the worst of the TrumpTrain virus is purged from the GOP, it will be hard to recruit people like her.

Back to that link?

Besides out west, making money, NOT graduating college, and born again? That's a weird combo. Born-again Protestantism is not strong in the west, which is in general the least religious part of the country. It's also, outside the actual coastal cities of the West Coast, the least black portion of the country. That said, given the past history of Mormonism, it was weird of Mia Love to convert.

Per my review of a recent book, "Blessed," though, it's not weird overall to see non-college grads, born-again Christians, and more than $100K a year as prime demographics. Modern black megachurches promote this entrepreneurialism as part of the success gospel. That then said, to tie back to Love, Mormonism has its own versions of the success gospel, as noted in my review.

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