Finally.

This is something I have been wanting the Republicans to do forever. Reach out to blacks on a personal level. On a community level. I even wrote a letter to the RNC early in the campaign last year suggesting this. It is WAY overdue.
Here are some excerpts from U.S. News and World Report for March 21:

"In the past month, Mehlman (RNC chair) has hosted town hall meetings with black audiences in Maryland and New Jersey, sat for a PBS television interview with African-American talk-show host Tavis Smiley, and traveled to Atlanta's Martin Luther King Jr. Center. "It's about building relationships," says Mehlman, the high-octane former campaign manager who helped engineer President Bush's victory last fall. "I don't go out and lecture. I listen and learn."

"Black conservatives--and disaffected black Democrats--are preparing a major push to convince African-Americans, first, that they've been taken for granted by Democrats and, second, that the Republican Party might be worth another look, especially if the GOP more directly addresses issues of concern to blacks. It's an effort that Republicans have made before--but this time, partisans on both sides believe it could pay real dividends."

The article describes the 9 to 16 percent jump in black voting during the Presidential election in Ohio that clearly helped push Bush over the top and the 7 to 13 percent jump in Florida. Maybe this is why:

With most African-Americans identifying as churchgoers, some pastors say a new emphasis on "family values," especially opposition to same-sex marriage, is responsible for the shift. Bishop Harry Jackson, a Maryland pastor and registered Democrat, who voted against Bush in 2000 but supported him last year, is leading an effort called the "Black Contract With America on Moral Values." The contract includes pledges to "protect marriages" and "eliminate abortion." Jackson is circulating the document among black clergy through a series of six summits across the country. Jackson hopes to collect a million signatures and says he's in preliminary talks with the White House: "We're dating, and there's tremendous attraction, but we're not married yet."
A conservative black group, the Mayflower Compact Coalition, will also begin collecting signatures next week for its "21st Century Mayflower Compact," a nine-point agenda for black America that includes support for school choice and private Social Security accounts. "We recognize the achievements of the civil rights movement," says Oliver Kellman, the group's chairman. "But we need a civil responsibilities movement." Advised in part by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's consulting firm, Mayflower is planning town hall meetings in up to 20 states--"

The article continues:

"...analysts agree that the GOP needs only modest gains to make a big difference. "For us, 20 percent [of the black vote] would be the death knell of the Democrats," says Phyllis Berry Myers, a Mayflower founder. It doesn't sound like an outsize goal. For Democrats, that's a sobering thought."

Who would have thought the issues that divide white religious conservatives and Southpark conservatives could be the EXACT issues that bring us more of the black vote.

Interesting.