Inside Politics

Say what?

Democratic strategist Paul Begala says Republicans want to kill him and his children to preserve tax cuts for the rich.

Mr. Begala was featured last week at the first-ever Campus Progress National Student Conference, which was designed to provide liberal students with the tools necessary to fight the conservative movement. The event in Washington also drew former President Bill Clinton, for whom Mr. Begala once worked as an adviser.

Mr. Begala, who was participating in a panel discussion, created a stir when he declared that Republicans had done a “poor job of defending” the United States, CNSNews.com reports.

Republicans, he added, “want to kill us.”

He continued, “I was driving past the Pentagon when that plane hit” on September 11. “I had friends on that plane. This is deadly serious to me.

“They want to kill me and my children if they can. But if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted — that while they didn’t protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won’t have to pay any money on the money they inherit,” Mr. Begala said.

Bond’s invective

NAACP Chairman Julian Bond has been known to use intemperate language, but he may have outdone himself at the civil rights organization’s annual convention in Milwaukee last week.

Mr. Bond deemed three venerable right-leaning public interest organizations, including the American Civil Rights Institute, headed by anti-quota crusader Ward Connerly, as nothing but front groups for the racist power structure, independent journalist Evan Gahr reports at www.chimpstein.com.

“The very names of these groups — the Institute for Justice, the Center for Individual Rights, the American Civil Rights Institute — are fraudulent, and their aims are frightening,” Mr. Bond said. “Having stolen our vocabulary, they also want to steal the just spoils of our righteous war.”

Mr. Bond also cast black conservatives as Uncle Toms.

“Like ventriloquists’ dummies, they speak in their puppet master’s voice, but we can see his lips move and we can hear his money talk,” Mr. Bond said. “They’ve financed a conservative constellation of make-believe, black-faced front organizations, all of them hollow shells with more names on the letterhead than there are people on their membership rolls.”

Bob Woodson, president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, told Mr. Gahr: “[Mr. Bond] does nothing but protest [the good works] others do.”

Mr. Woodson added: “Coming from Julian Bond, that’s almost a compliment. All he does is attack anyone who is not a Democrat. He is a minstrel show.”

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