President clashes with civil rights group
From Brian Todd
CNN
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 Bush to skip an opportunity to speak at NAACP convention.
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Leaders of the NAACP say they're furious with President Bush for refusing to address their convention this past weekend.
"If the president's mantle, and measurement for dialogue, is to only talk and to only meet with those individuals or organizations that agree with him, then we are getting closer to the previous regime in Baghdad than we are to a democracy here in America," said NAACP President Kwase Mfume said Saturday.
The nations largest civil rights group's Chairman Julian Bond says African-Americans are "ready to turn anger into action, to work for regime change here at home."
Bond said the GOP appeals to "the dark under-side of American culture, to the minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality ... They preach neutrality and practice racial division."
The White House cited a scheduling conflict as the reason for the president's absence this year.
Bush, who did speak to the NAACP during the 2000 campaign, went further, describing his current relationship with the group's leadership as "basically non-existent ... You've heard the rhetoric and the names they've called me."
John Kerry, who will speak to the NAACP on Thursday, seized on the divide.
"Friends, I will be a president who meets with the leadership of the civil rights congress, who meets with the NAACP," Kerry said Monday.
But Democrats have had their own problems with what they've traditionally seen as one of their key constituencies.
Last summer, then-candidates Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman and Dennis Kucinich all skipped the NAACP convention, and all three ended up apologizing.
