The Republican Party's history is rich and chock full of emancipation and black history.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Black history is American history.
There's a very big gulf between the black civil rights leadership in America and the black middle class in America. The black middle class are conservative. Many of those minorities can be persuaded to be members of the Republican Party.
Republicans working in leadership and the trenches are largely old, white, male, out-of-touch, out of ideas, technology averse, and living in the past.
You can't say the Negro left the Republican Party; the Negro feels he was evicted from the Republican Party.
African American history is really American history because African Americans really helped build this country.
History is history.
The Republicans are, 'the party of the rich,' my mom said, 'We're poor, so we're Democrats.' That convinced me. I had no wish to remain poor, so I became a Republican at the age of 12.
Sure, there's a chunk of African-Americans out there who associate the Republican Party with racism, frankly particularly in the Deep South. It's an unfair perception, but it exists. Over a period time, that perception will die away if Republicans are focusing on issues that happen to impact African-Americans.
The Republican Party just isn't held in high repute in the black community. Under Bill Brock we were reaching out to broaden the base of the party. We have to go back to that.
As I've said repeatedly, Republicans are very good at describing things in black and white; Democrats are very good at describing the 11 shades of gray.