It's no secret that the Republican Party has been utterly unable to win the black vote in America. There is a deep, widespread perception in the black community that the Democratic Party is their friend and the Republican Party is their enemy.

However, the evidence is stacking up in a decidedly different way, and Thomas Sowell says it's time that the Republicans began pointing it out--boldly and clearly. Sowell says:

Education is the most obvious example. Poll after poll shows that most blacks want school vouchers. But Democrats -- black and white alike -- bitterly oppose anything that would offend the teachers' unions, who are among their biggest political backers, in terms of money, votes, and the ability to mobilize precincts on Election Day with manpower and phone banks.

The teachers' unions are the 800-pound gorilla of the Democratic Party. So there is no way the Democrats can match what the Republicans can offer black parents on vouchers.

Dennis Miller, a former Democrat, says it was the Democrats' stance on this issue (with the "pro-choice" party being decidedly anti-choice) which finally caused him to jump ship. The GOP needs to make an issue of Democrat hypocricy in this matter

Sowell also points to the Democrat stance on environmental issues, which has had a very real (and very negative) impact on blacks:

When they make it an ordeal, and sometimes virtually impossible, to build homes or offices, for fear that some toad or worm will be inconvenienced, that means sky-high housing prices that working people cannot afford and fewer businesses to provide jobs that they need.

Census data make it painfully clear that blacks are being forced out of many communities where affluent liberal Democrats have had unchallenged control for years and have let the green agenda run amok. In such communities on the northern California coast, the numbers of blacks have fallen absolutely, even while the population as a whole has grown.

Conservatives have done a generally poor job of explaining how real conservatism benefits everybody. As Sowell points out, if they stopped trying to be faux Democrats and instead sold the true strenghts of conservatism, they could win elections in landslides for years to come.