Julian Bond sees GOP with 'dark underside'

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MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- Republicans appeal "to the dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality," NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said yesterday at the civil rights group's 94th annual convention.

"They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division ... their idea of reparations is to give war criminal Jefferson Davis a pardon," Mr. Bond said during his welcoming remarks. "Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side."

Mr. Bond, who in a 2001 speech compared conservatives to the Taliban, never specifically used the term Republicans but made the comments about those who control the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court.

"We are and always have been nonpartisan ... but being nonpartisan doesn't mean being noncritical. And it doesn't even mean criticizing all parties equally. If the Democrats were doing anything, we'd criticize them, too," Mr. Bond said.

Mr. Bond, a former Democratic state legislator in Georgia, also attacked President Bush's tax cuts, saying Mr. Bush signed a "death warrant for social programs for decades and decades to come."

He promised that if Hispanics and blacks vote in that the same rate as they did in 2000, "the no-show National Guardsman in the White House and his draft-dodging vice president will lose by 3 million votes," referring to Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

For the past several decades, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has been a mainstay of support for Democrats. It is the nation's oldest civil rights organization, a group headed by Kweisi Mfume, a former Democratic congressman from Maryland. It is seen by those on the right as an agency of liberal advocacy.

On Saturday, Mr. Mfume addressed reporters by chastising those Democratic presidential contenders who don't appear before the group this week.