Analysis: Republican National Committee

REPUBLICANS ARE COMMITTED TO THE BLACK COMMUNITY

• The Republican National Committee (RNC) is celebrating Black History Month by continuing to engage with the Black community and welcome new members into our Party of opportunity.
  • For the 2022 cycle, the RNC made a multimillion-dollar commitment to continue our strategic minority engagement efforts, including in Black American communities across the country.
  • Thanks to that historic commitment, Americans elected John James (MI-10) and Wesley Hunt (TX-38) to Congress, growing the number of Black Republicans in Congress to its highest total since 1877.
  • Overall, the Republican Party gained 6 points with Black voters in the 2022 midterm elections.
• This commitment is not new; the Republican Party has a long history of electing Black leaders and empowering Black Americans through historic firsts.
  • In 1870, Republican Hiram Revels (R-MS) became the first Black American to serve in Congress as a U.S. Senator.
  • That same year, Republican Joseph H. Rainey (R-SC) became the first Black American member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
  • In 1879, Republican Blanche K. Bruce (R-MS) became the first Black American to preside over the U.S. Senate.
  • In 2003, Jennette Bradley became the first Black female to serve as lieutenant governor of any U.S. state.
  • In 2013, Tim Scott (R-SC) became the first Black American to serve in both chambers of Congress.
  • In 2020, Republican Mark Robinson became the first Black American elected Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina.
  • In 2022, Republican Winsome Sears became the first Black female to serve as Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor.

REPUBLICANS ARE MAKING INROADS AS BIDEN’S SUPPORT AMONG BLACK AMERICANS IS FALLING

• Biden’s radical policies have hurt the Black community, leading to a loss of support from Black voters for Biden – and the Democrat Party – for failing to best represent their interests.
• Not only have Biden’s policies failed Black Americans, but they come on top of nearly half a century of racist and racially insensitive remarks from Biden.
  • During just the 2020 election, Biden declared that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids” and that “you ain’t Black” if you don’t vote for him.
• Meanwhile, Republicans are committed to the Black community and continue to welcome new members into our Party of opportunity.

BIDEN’S FAILED ECONOMY LEAVES BLACK AMERICANS BEHIND

• Black Americans are being left behind in Biden’s economy, burdened with higher prices and lower wages when accounting for inflation.
  • Black voters ranked inflation as their top issue in the midterms.
• According to a recent study by the Dallas Fed, inflation is disproportionately hurting Black households, with 54 percent of Black Americans stressed by high inflation.
  • Black Americans “bear the brunt” of rising prices, as necessities make up a larger share of Black families’ budgets, and many Black Americans live in food deserts and pay higher prices at convenience stores or travel further for groceries.
• Under the Biden administration, median household income among Black Americans has declined.
• Biden created an economic climate that is hurting the Black community, yet recently signed legislation that gives $80 billion to the IRS for additional audits and an army of 87,000 new IRS agents.
  • Black taxpayers are three times as likely to be audited by the IRS as other taxpayers according to a study by economists from Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago and the Treasury Department.
  • In 2021, the IRS audited Americans earning $25,000 a year at five times the rate of other groups and directed “more than half” of its audits at those making less than $75,000.
  • A 2019 study found that the five counties with the highest audit rates are all predominantly Black.

BLACK AMERICANS ARE DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTED BY RISING CRIME

• Crime is on the rise in Biden’s America, often disproportionally impacting Black Americans in Democrat-run cities across the country.
  • For the third year in a row Democrat-run Atlanta broke its homicide record, with 2022 seeing the most murders since 1996.
• Biden’s open border policies have allowed drugs like fentanyl to pour into American communities.
  • Black men are the most likely demographic group to die from a drug overdose.
  • In Democrat-run Washington, D.C., nearly every overdose death last year involved fentanyl – with Black D.C. residents accounting for 84 percent of the opioid deaths since 2017.
• As crime rates surge across the nation, Democrat officials are astonishingly still pushing to defund the police.
  • Only 28 percent of Black Americans support the Democrats’ defund the police policies.
  • Instead, Black Americans want police to retain a local presence and believe that defund the police is a “contributing factor to violent crime.”

DEMOCRAT SCHOOL CLOSURES HURT BLACK STUDENTS

• Democrat-run cities kept kids out of the classroom for far too long, despite the fact that these school closures have disproportionately hurt low-income and minority students.
• The NAEP report, better known as “the nation’s report card,” found that from 2020 to 2022 reading scores fell by the largest margin in more than 30 years, while math scores saw their first ever decline since NAEP began tracking achievement in the 1970s.
  • This decline was even worse for minority students, with math scores dropping by 13 points for Black students and eight points for Hispanic students.
  • Low-income, Black, and Hispanic students were put at a further disadvantage due to school closures, “in part because their schools were more likely to continue remote learning for longer periods of time.”
• The Harvard Center for Education Policy found that students who learned remotely for the majority of 2020-2021 “on average… lost the equivalent of about 50 percent of a typical school year’s math learning during the study’s two-year window.”
  • This study also found that low income, Black, and Latino students fell further behind compared to students who are high income, White, or Asian, leading to “the largest increase in educational inequity in a generation.”

BIDEN’S STUDENT-LAST AGENDA LEAVES BLACK AMERICANS IN THE DUST

• Biden is only concerned about his wealthy and teachers’ union donors, leaving students and parents behind.
• Biden, who is “not a charter school fan,” has already taken steps toward fulfilling his pledge that charter schools would be “gone” if elected president.
  • In March, the Biden administration proposed, and later backtracked on, a rule that would have given traditional school districts virtual veto power over competition, essentially stymieing the growth of charter schools.
  • Black parents want better education choices for their children, with a clear majority of Black Americans supporting school choice while Black students have become one of the fastest growing homeschool demographic groups.
• Biden has also pushed for his student debt bailout, which experts warn will cost taxpayers billions, worsen inflation, and disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
  • Canceling student debt would worsen economic inequality as nearly two-thirds of all student debt is owed by the top 40 percent of households.
  • “All serious economists agree” that student loan forgiveness is regressive.

BIDEN’S VACCINE MANDATE TARGETED THE BLACK COMMUNITY

• Biden supported Democrat vaccine mandates that disproportionality hit the Black community.
• In America’s three largest cities – all run by Democrats – roughly 50 percent of Black residents were banned from going to restaurants, bars, and movie theaters.
• The vaccine mandate also hurt Black-owned businesses.
  • In the “less wealthy South and West Side neighborhoods” of Chicago, business had “gone down dramatically” after the vaccine mandate was implemented.
  • In Leimert Park, a predominantly Black community in Los Angeles, business owner Anthony Jolly said he believed that “people will make a decision to go elsewhere, where there is no mandate.”

  Originally posted here.