Newsone.com Exclusive: Black Scholar Explains Why African-Americans Should Vote Republican
By Lynette Holloway – Kiron Skinner, director of the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and surrogate to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012, tells NewsOne that African-Americans should look beyond the rhetoric and consider voting Republican in 2016. She is also a foreign policy adviser to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s presidential campaign.
Skinner maps out her reasons in an email Q&A with NewsOne:
1. NewsOne: The Republican Party is mostly White and has been accused of being dismissive of issues of great concern to African-Americans, including criminal justice, education reforms, and unemployment. Why should African Americans vote Republican?
Kiron Skinner: Democratic systems work best when there is political competition within them. That’s good and bad news for African-American voters. It is good news in the sense that if they decide not to always vote with the Democratic Party, there will be intense competition for their vote. The bad news is that African-Americans vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party, and this means their vote can be counted on instead of courted. This reality is a powerful contributing factor to why issues of utmost concern for African Americans, like equal opportunity, jobs, and crime reduction, are unevenly (and infrequently) resolved through the political process. One of the reasons the political process is not working for African Americans is that as a race (or a bloc of voters) we have made ourselves too predictable in terms of our voting patterns.
The Smarter Sentencing Act of 2015 (S. 502) is an example of why African-Americans should consider voting Republican. Senators Cory Booker and Rand Paul support this bill. If voted into law, there would be a reduction in jail time for non-violent drug offenders, especially those who had a minimal role, such as possessing drugs or serving as a courier, in the offense at issue. Read the full exclusive interview at Newsone.com.
