Hip-Hop Republicans Try to Change Their Party’s Focus
By Andy Kroll - Oct 31st, 2008 at 4:44 pmThe following is the second of two posts on The Hip-Hop Republicans, a group of young people aiming to reinvent the Republican Party. You can read the first post here.
Though the Hip-Hop Republicans have been buoyed by the excitement of an election year, group member Lenny McAllister stressed that the organization’s goals transcend individual elections. He singled out the GOP’s short-term focus on winning the next election as damaging to the party as a whole. Instead, Republicans need to look further into the future, he insisted, and in doing so shift their focus back to the growth and well-being of urban areas. “What we have to preach to young voters and moderate voters is Republicanism is larger than one candidate and one eight-year period,” he told me. “We’re not talking about winning elections; we’re talking about making a better America.”
That said, Hip Hop-Republicans see the current presidential election as an opportune moment to push their agenda within the broader Republican Party. McAllister pointed to the campaign of Barack Obama and his message of change as an example of the shifting tide in American politics in 2008. “Senator Obama has really brought in a new spirit with the presidential election, having energized a new group of voters to come into the mix to really be involved and really vote,” McAllister said. As for the message of the Hip-Hop Republicans, he added, “This is absolutely the time for that change.”
Not surprisingly, McAllister conceded that the broader Republican Party has yet to embrace the Hip-Hop Republicans and their message. While he said he believes the GOP supports a diversity of ideas within the party ranks, the Hip-Hop Republicans might still be too avant-garde. “I think one of the things we’re going to discover is that the country club Republicanism is widespread throughout the country, and it is often making an us-versus-them dynamic on the political radar,” McAllister said.
But for Hip-Hop Republicans, the deteriorating state of the nation’s cities has instilled their demands with a sense of urgency. Hip-Hop Republicans believe their party, now more than ever, must step up and address these problems. “We have people that are dying in urban communities, and we’re going to have to take different approaches to save lives-different political approaches, different practices in policy and different approaches to awareness of our image,” McAllister told me. “We need to engage voters and to engage these problems.”
And with the old guard of the Republican Party unlikely to help with this shift back to cities, Hip-Hop Republicans, like Obama, understand that young people with fresh ideas are the key. As McAllister explained, “It’s going to take a younger generation to say, ‘Look, we’re more like you than we are different. We have conservative values, but we still believe in affirmative action. We want less band aids and more healing.’ We have to bring about a new dynamic.”
Andy Kroll is a senior at the University of Michigan and a former editorial intern at The Nation. He can be reached at andykroll@gmail.com.
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