He said, “If Republicans have a clue and do this and go out and ask every African-American for their vote, I think we can transform an election in one cycle . . . . I think there is fully a third of the African-American vote that is open to much of the message, because much of what the Democrats has offered hasn’t worked.” That part is right, but his plan to win them over is flawed.

He wants to do this by picking a few discrete issues (school choice, drug law reforms and economic empowerment — tax cuts and regulatory rollback in distressed areas). In other words, he is doing nothing to deviate from his anti-government libertarianism. Is there any evidence this would work?

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He is opposed — vehemently so — to a whole range of issues African Americans embrace such as Obamacare (at or above 70 percent in most polls), Common Core and repeal of the death penalty. His exhortation of capitalism and denigration of policies as “socialist” runs directly counter to polling on African Americans’ reactions to those terms. (In one survey 41 percent reacted positively to “capitalism,” while 55 percent reacted positively to “socialism.”) I don’t think voters will overlook these and many other philosophical differences simply because Rand Paul supports school choice (most every Republican does) or drug reform (this is widely supported as well).

It is his staunch libertarian outlook in which government is the problem in every situation that may be the biggest barrier to gaining support from African Americans. National Journal reported last year as the shutdown Paul supported was looming:

While 33 percent of whites said Congress should withhold funding if Obama won’t shelve the Affordable Care Act, only 16 percent of minorities agreed. And while whites divided relatively closely on whether Congress should raise the debt limit only if Obama concedes on health care—36 percent said yes and 48 percent said no—nonwhites stampeded against the idea by exactly 3-to-1. Minorities were also far more likely than whites (53 percent to 33 percent) to say they would blame Republicans if a shutdown occurs. The contrast was even larger on the underlying issue of the health care law itself. A 51 percent majority of whites agreed that “Congress should repeal the program to expand coverage because the government can’t afford it at a time of large budget deficits,” while only 43 percent said “Congress should keep the program to expand coverage because it’s important to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance.” Minorities, by comparison, broke 2-to-1 in favor of the health care law: 62 percent said it was more important to expand coverage, while only 31 percent backed repeal.

On gun control — an anathema to Paul — the numbers are even worse:

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While whites split fairly closely on whether banning assault weapons could seriously reduce mass shootings (53 percent said yes, while 45 percent said no), minorities were unequivocal: 68 percent thought a ban would help, while only 29 percent disagreed. Just 47 percent of whites, compared with 67 percent of nonwhites, thought that limiting the size of ammunition clips would help. (While half of whites thought such limits would not have much impact, only one-third of minorities agreed.) There was broader agreement on the value of “background checks for all legal gun transfers, including those between private individuals,” but minorities were particularly enthusiastic: Fully 84 percent of them said it would have an impact, while 72 percent of whites agreed.

We don’t need to do this in the abstract. The Republican who has done the best with African Americans recently is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whom Rand Paul scolds as insufficiently conservative. Christie expanded Medicaid, signed onto some but not all gun restrictions passed by the legislature, and embraced substantial funding for items like schools and anti-drug-addiction programming. School choice was a no-go in deep blue New Jersey, but his takeover of two failing school systems and insistence on rigorous standards earned him kudos in the African American community as I witnessed first-hand in Camden, N.J. And he pummeled the feds for financing for Sandy recovery — something Rand Paul sneered at. Christie got 21 percent of the African American vote in New Jersey.

We will have another test case coming up in November when Ohio Gov. John Kasich — the Energizer bunny of action and government ideas — is up for re-election in a state with a significant percentage of African Americans. Like Christie, he also extended Medicaid. He is a blue-collar guy with no qualms about using conservative principles in a vigorous way to solve problems. I suspect he will do better than 13 percent with African Americans.

In short, showing up is commendable and essential (Christie has done this for years), but the overall message, not merely positioning on a few issues to dangle before them, is what generally appeals or turns off voters. There is no evidence the sort of crash course on free market capitalism Rand Paul favors is going to expand appeal to more voters — white and black and among working and middle classes. This does not mean Republicans have to embrace the liberal welfare state. But it does mean they have to show they care about and have ideas on health care, poverty, education, etc. — as reform conservatives have done — to address the failures of the liberal welfare state and beat back the image of the GOP as uncaring. It is limited and vigorous government, not squeezing government by eliminating great chunks of it that has the most appeal to nontraditional Republicans.

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Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) does a lot of “showing up” in minority communities and has been doing it longer and more systematically than most Republicans. He is carrying a message of reform conservatism, not one in which all problems are solved by cutting government. He is no squishy liberal, but his message is much more likely to intersect with the views of minority voters.

One basic principle of outreach is that you have to understand where people are coming from. You can’t win over college kids or minorities simply by plucking out a few issues and ignoring the big and important ones. Simply insisting that the same-old, same-old anti-government language and formula will be good for nontraditional voters, often gets you stone silence or voracious criticism. As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.