GOP Honors NAACP

By Tim Chapman
March 2, 2006

The NAACP’s leader, Julian Bond, is no stranger to controversy and irresponsible rhetoric. In 2004, the NAACP Chairman compared the Republican Party to the Taliban regime. 

Bond told a raucous crowd that the GOP’s “idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side." He went on to say that Republicans “draw their most rabid supporters from the Taliban wing of American politics. Now they want to write bigotry back into the Constitution." 

As a reward for his irresponsible and incendiary rhetoric, the House GOP leadership yesterday scheduled floor time to pass a resolution honoring his organization.

The first part of the resolution honors the NAACP for its 97^th anniversary. It is the second clause in the resolution, “praising the NAACP” on the occasion of its 97^th anniversary “for its work,” that is raising eyebrows. 

Aside from divisive comments like the one above, for what kind of “work” is GOP House leadership so anxious to praise the NAACP? A cursory glance at their most recent congressional scorecard tells the story.

The scorecard negatively counts votes for the "extreme right wing judicial nominees" Priscilla Owen, Mark Pryor and Janice Rogers Brown (an African American nominee, let alone potential first-ever African American female nominee to the Supreme Court). The scorecard also negatively counts votes for widely respected and clearly mainstream now-Chief Justice John Roberts.

Then there are other issues. The NAACP went on record as opposing free trade by negatively scoring the Central American Free Trade Agreement. They went on record as being for increased government spending and continued fiscal recklessness by negatively scoring the "mean-spirited budget cut bill," better known as the Deficit Reduction Act -- the first real attempt at fiscal sanity by the GOP since 1997. 

They also want to create a myriad of new federal agencies and drastically grow the size of the federal government. A particularly interesting score is that of an amendment that would "toughen environmental justice." The amendment would "expand the definition of environmental justice, direct each federal agency to establish an office of environmental justice, and re-establish the interagency federal working group on environmental justice." An "office of environmental justice?" Paging George Orwell…

The resolution passed the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon without even a peep of dissent. Despite the fact that many rank and file conservatives were uncomfortable with the resolution off the record, it passed by voice vote. Because it passed by voice vote, no votes were recorded, so no members officially went on record. 

It’s amazing how effective the muzzle of political correctness can be.