This week, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) president Kweisi Mfume was very upset.  His organization’s annual convention was held in Philadelphia and despite being invited, President Bush refused to attend and speak.  So far as Mfume is concerned, Bush’s refusal is a slap against the organization.  He told Knight Ridder News Services that if President Bush’s “new mantle for dialogue is to only meet with those who agree with him, we are getting closer to the previous regime in Baghdad than we are to a democracy.”

The easily inferred assumption one can take from Mfume’s comments is that the NAACP doesn’t agree with President Bush – something that is blatantly obvious from looking at the NAACP’s response to George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign after he spoke at their convention that year.  The NAACP responded to then-Governor Bush’s reaching out by running advertisements all-but accusing Bush of murdering a young black man from Texas for failing to support hate crimes legislation.  Never mind that Bush supported the death penalty for the white men who murdered the young man, but that wasn’t enough for the NAACP.  Since being elected president, there have been few organizations more outspoken and more opposed to Bush than the NAACP – despite the many proposals offered that attempt to stop the current downward spiral of black America.

Not a single member of the NAACP’s leadership repudiates the comments by Mfume, or the NAACP’s hate-filled tactics during the 2000 presidential campaign.  It takes little effort to assume that the NAACP will run more anti-Bush advertisements in their efforts to get some support for Democratic candidate John F. Kerry.

Nevertheless, Mfume still insists that Bush “take a higher road” and speak to his organization because he views it as the premier black organization in America.  Liberals love to speak of some moral high ground, insisting that it is the conservative party that is incapable of achieving it.  Mfume may talk of the “higher road,” but he, and his organization under him and chairman Julian Bond, is incapable of achieving it.  No sooner had Bush declined the invitation than the NAACP went into overdrive attacking him, affirming the President’s decision to not speak at the convention.

No speaker will ever speak at an organization that openly attacks them.  With the present leadership of the NAACP, going to their convention for President Bush would be little different than Joe Lieberman speaking at the annual convention of neo-Nazis – the rhetoric of the NAACP is that strong, that vicious, and that hostile.  Why should Bush give a photo-op, and the accompanying validation, for Mfume and his organization when it is the NAACP president who has frittered away that validation in the eyes of America?

Despite their tax-exempt status, which is permitted only if the organization does not become a political entity, the NAACP is an enormous political machine that convinces its membership to vote liberal in every election.  The problem with this position is that the liberal establishment cares little about black America.  They may talk about how they feel the pain of the black Americans who are entrenched in poverty, but they then oppose legislation and reforms that would help to alleviate that poverty by encouraging those citizens to get educations and jobs.  They support politically correct racism and call it affirmative action.  They support abortion and destroy the black family.  Yet, somehow the liberals are the ones who succeed in mustering the majority of the black vote every election.

President Bush needs to do something if he’s going to get elected.  He needs to address black voters and get them to understand the terrible destruction that has been wrought against their communities by the ill-conceived policies of liberal politicians.  He needs to remind them that it is the Democrats who are the historical party of racism and who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1965.  He must remind the black voters that it is the Democratic party that now twists that Act to continue institutionalized racism.  Bush has a slight advantage currently because many blacks distrust Kerry almost as much as they distrust him, which means that he has less distance to cover if he is going to succeed in changing their minds and convincing them that his policies truly support black America.

The NAACP’s leadership has moved their organization from the relative center of the political spectrum to the far-left fringes.  The membership needs to realize this, and perhaps Bush’s refusal to speak to a hostile audience will help the NAACP membership realize how far to the left their organization has gone under the supposed leadership of Kweisi Mfume and Julian Bond.

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