QandO

July 11, 2004

The rest of the story
Posted by McQ

I do love selective reporting. In a WaPo story today, Mike Allen essentially hints that Bush is just being a big baby about the NAACP and making a huge mistake by not addressing their convention. After all, according to Allen, Julian Bond simply said this:

Bond has accused Republicans of "playing the race card in election after election." He said they have "appealed to that dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality," and "preach racial neutrality and they practice racial division."

And because he only said that, well, its just Bush backing out on his 2000 campaign promise to be a "different kind of Republican", one that said that "there is much we can do together to advance racial harmony and economic opportunity."

The key word that Allen misses, of course is "together". Together implies that both sides will participate. Both sides will help in this attempt to "advance racial harmony and economic opportunity." Not insult the other side. Not say vicious and nasty things about it. But actually commit to working together.

Cooperate. Apparently Julian Bond and the NAACP have the opinon that they have no role in that attempted cooperation. Apparently Mr. Bond is of the opinion that he can say any vile thing he can conjure up and it is the responsibility of the president to simply cooperate ... to reach out ... to fold up like a wet paper box and validate Bond's rhetoric by rewarding it with an appearance.

I don't recall Bush saying anything like this about the NAACP:

"Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side," Bond told a cheering audience. "They've written a new constitution for Iraq and ignore the Constitution here at home. They draw their most rabid supporters from the Taliban wing of American politics. Now they want to write bigotry back into the Constitution."

Instead it is the Chairman of the NAACP saying such things about the President's party and, obviously as head of that party, the President. As I pointed out then, Julian Bond had just tradeded his credibility and that of the NAACP for cheap political points.

Of course that's not all Bond has said. Allen reported some of it in his only quote of Bond above, but here's the real context of that quote:

"The passage of these two laws in 1964 and 1965 marked the beginning of the dependence of the Republican Party on the politics of racial division to win elections and gain power," Bond said. "By playing the race card in election after election, they've appealed to that dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality. They preach racial neutrality and they practice racial division."

Interesting, huh? The two laws cited had a larger precentage of Republicans vote for it than Democrats. Neither law would have passed without the Republican votes. Didn't stand a chance. Even LBJ publicly thanked the Republicans for their stand and votes. He had no such kudos for the Democrats of his own party. The one's playing the race card at that time were the Senate Democrats who filibustered both acts in an attempt to defeat them.

But Bond doesn't let fact stand in the way of cheap shots and vicious rhetoric ... not if he can help it.

"We have a president who talks like a populist and governs for the privileged," Bond said. "We were promised compassionate conservatism; instead, we got crummy capitalism."

Jon had a nice post on the same subject a couple of days ago. Go read his letter to the NAACP. It boils down to:

"Oh, by the way, Mr. President, no offense meant. Just drop on by and help us restore some relevance and credibility to our extremist organization, will you? And remember the rules: We get to speak vile and hateful things about you and yours and call you everything but a child of God, and you get to talk about reaching out and opportunity".

Yeah, right.

I say, "way to go George!" ... let 'em stew in their own vile "hate" speech.

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