The problem is that to some extent, black voters let themselves be taken for granted. Black politics in the United States is extremely hierarchistic, and the people at the top are entrenched partisan Democrats. So black Republicans find themselves facing Uncle Tom epithets, even if their domestic policy isn't Reaganite.
In contrast, Hispanic organizations are more flexible about which party to support, so they get a string of high-profile Republicans who support their agenda on immigration more than most Democrats. Alberto Gonzales has been rightly criticized for being a fascist, but he's never faced racial epithets the way Colin Powell has.
The problem with the Republican Party is that it is the vehicle for revanchist racism in the South, having won that "contract" in competitive bidding with the Democrats a generation ago. It did not start with Nixon but he was a prominent if cynical exponent of that approach. The large entry of black political figures into the Republican Party would cause an exodus of white Southern Republican voters from the party.
It's kind of like saying "if the Republicans could just dump the abortion issue, they'd never lose." No, they'd never win; their base would stay home. In this environment, it's crazy for most black politicians to consider a career in the Republican Party. Maryland is unusual in that the Democratic Party has a lot of conservative, revanchist registrants who want to vote in the primary for the likely winning state-wide candidate, and also unusual in that black voters make up almost 1/3 of the state. Ironically, Maryland's overwhelming "blue" advantage induces a "purpling" of the "blue dye" particularly in Southern Maryland, i.e. Steny Hoyer and Mike Miller country.
First, if the Republicans dump the abortion issue, they'll win. The fundamentalists say they'll gladly vote for Giuliani if it means keeping Clinton out of power.
Second, the exodus you're talking about will take time, and may not materialize at all if the Republicans gain a black vote in the South for every white vote they lose. Reagan started appealing to Dominionists in 1980, but it wasn't until 2000 that the Northern suburbanites who used to vote Republican for economic reasons became Democratic.
On your first point, the reason that the fundamentalists don't want Hillary is that Hillary is pro-choice whereas Giuliani is pro-life. That may sound counter-intuitive but pro-life is as pro-life does.
Giuliani has made it abundantly clear - to the point of going to Regent Madrassa, law sub-madrassa, to praise the school for having gotten its students hired by the Bush administration - that he will placate the hard right. He will nominate judges to the right of Alabama's thrown-off-the-bench Roy Moore or as close to that as the Senate will let him to replace . Why? Because they want Roe killed and Giuliani will deliver the dagger when two or all three liberal justices retire.
On your second point, it is an interesting hypothesis. The case for a (rough) vote-for-vote shift among black voters and revanchist whites is a "strong thesis" and one of which I would be quite skeptical. I suspect that whites would leave the GOP faster than blacks would join, rendering it both politically weak and alien to (modern) Southern black voters. That smells like defeat. But I could be wrong.
What he said in the debate was, "It'd be okay to repeal. It'd also be if a strict constructionist viewed Roe as precedent." That'd be the first time a pro-lifer called Roe precedent...
Roe is objectively a precedent. Other cases (Webster, etc.) have relied on it as precedent. The issue is NOT whether it is a precedent, but rather a great precedent or a miserable one. I think Giuliani has left himself the room to call it "yes, a precedent like every law student knows, but a crappy, poorly written one, like every law student knows" if ever asked again.
Giuliani has made it clear that he will nominate judges somewhere between Alito and Scalia in judicial philosophy. Scalia and especially Thomas are relatively young men by Supreme Court standards; each of them wants to be the one to knife Roe, especially Thomas, whose respect for stare decisis is lower than Scalia's.
A problem for abortion-rights advocates is that Roe is a weak piece of legal writing. You are not trained formally as a U.S. attorney but surely your ruthless eye has read it and noted its numerous logical flaws. The way I read Roe, a majority of the court essentially said, "Banning abortion shocks our conscience and shocking our conscience is unconsitutional. Here's our junkyard attempt at declaring this conscience-shock unconstitutional." We don't have a "bodily sovereignty" amendment in the Bill of Rights and I think we need one that would address abortion, drug policy and sexual freedom in one stroke. Blackmun tried to write one from his desk and failed.
I have not yet read the more recent Canadian Rosenthal decision on abortion rights but I have heard that its reasoning is tighter than Roe's.
If Ehrlich wasn't thinking of running again (in 2010) he would moved back to Baltimore County where he might have had a chance to to run for CE in 2010. That he stayed in Annapolis is a sign that you're right.
The main problem with Roe is that yeah, the Bill of Rights isn't equipped to deal with privacy cases (no, I haven't read the decision...). But on the other hand, it's helped federalize the issue; most Americans would rather have the abortion question resolved federally. And there if it comes to a legislative consensus, it'll be far more restrictive than now, but still more permissive than it was pre-Roe. So at least you won't have Texas and Georgia overflowing with unwanted babies.
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