Whats Driving Black Candidates to the Republican Party?
The Republican Party has recently attracted an almost unprecedented number of Black candidates to its fold\u2014more than at any time since the Reconstruction era. \u201cIn a moment where the Party . . . has really wholeheartedly embraced white-grievance politics,\u201d Leah Wright Rigueur tells David Remnick, \u201cthey are endorsing more Black candidates than they have in the past twenty-five years.\u201d Rigueur is a historian at Johns Hopkins University and the author of \u201cThe Loneliness of the Black Republican.\u201d The G.O.P., she argues, is exploiting a moment when the long-standing relationship between Black Americans and the Democratic Party is weakening, and it aims to capitalize on an \u201ceveryday conservatism\u201d among voters. \u201cIt actually makes sense that in the aftermath of Barack Obama\u2014with Black people\u2019s levels of support and warmth for the Democratic Party in decline and the belief among a small sect of African Americans that [it] is just as racist as the Republican Party\u2014that actually frees some people up to actually vote Republican.\u201d Plus, the staff writer Emma Green, who covers the pro-life movement, discusses how individuals\u2019 positions seldom reflect the furious partisan divide, and she shares some nuanced sources that have informed her reporting.