More than that, the reason I don't understand why the Republican Party seems to think they can attract Black voters without a change in their platform as significant as their change from "The Party of Lincoln" to "The Party of the Southern Startegy."

Ezra at Pandagon

Just to riff off of Jesse's post noting Novak's accusation that Clarke is a racist, the GOP just doesn't get it. They don't get to use civil rights against us. I know they figure that it should be a transferrable issue and they should get to play the race card, but they're just wrong. They try it every so often and not only doesn't it work, it just makes them look whiny.

or, more precisely:

For many conservatives, the riddle's answer is obvious: Black politicians are out of touch. But, if black politicians were really so dismissive of the views of their constituents, they'd no longer be in office. For decades now, conservatives have touted polls showing that African-Americans hold conservative views on gay rights, abortion, the death penalty and school vouchers. And yet I can't think of a single election in which any of those issues has hurt a liberal black politician among black voters.

To suggest that black politicians don't represent their constituents because blacks tell pollsters they dislike gay marriage is like saying Republicans don't represent their constituents because many GOP voters say they prefer education spending to cutting taxes. If politicians keep behaving a certain way, and getting elected, it's a good bet they are getting signals from their constituents that the polls aren't picking up.

One thing the polls don't pick up is black suspicion of the Republican Party. When pollsters ask blacks about gay marriage, they're asking in a relative vacuum. But, when the issue is raised in a state legislature or in a political campaign, its partisan implications are glaringly obvious. And the very fact that the GOP is leading the anti-gay-marriage movement de-legitimizes the issue for black politicians and black voters.

As State Rep. Tyrone Brooks, head of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, explained to The New York Times, "This is not about your personal beliefs. It's about a political ballgame the Republicans kicked off." The Reverend Walter Fauntroy, a black former delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia, actually supports a federal anti-gay-marriage amendment. Yet, when he went on National Public Radio this February to debate the issue, he prefaced his comments by announcing, "I'm annoyed to have to discuss this issue in an election year, because it's yet another sideshow being used by radical right-wing fiscal and social conservatives to divert attention from the critical issues."

In other words, Republicans hope gay marriage will change blacks' views of the GOP. But those views are so negative that the reverse happens - African-Americans transfer their hostility to the GOP to whatever issue the GOP happens to be supporting. This dynamic isn't confined to gay marriage. Polling shows that many blacks support school vouchers. And yet in 2002, when black Democrat Cory Booker ran for mayor of Newark, incumbent Sharpe James cited his flirtation with vouchers as evidence that he was a closet Republican. Which is one reason Booker overwhelmingly lost the city's black vote.

In fact, in my particular case the Republican Party has convince me that any gesture they claim to be making toward minorities is actually a gesture toward moderate white folks.