Bush Touts Voting Rights Act Renewal

I don't totally agree with this. In fact I'd rather they just find a way to make this permanent instead of just trying to extend it another 25 years. All the same it's great the President Bush spoke up on the issue of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This was reported in the Washington Post.

In this article President Bush visited and address the NAACP for the first time in his Presidency having rebuffed them for five years. Makes sense to, sense the NAACP has been generally hostile but this is what apparently convinced President Bush to stop by...

For five years in a row, Bush has declined invitations to address the NAACP convention. This year, he said yes. He was introduced by NAACP head Bruce Gordon.

"Bruce was a polite guy," Bush said. "I thought what he was going to say, `It's about time you showed up.' And I'm glad I did."

Bush said he saw his attendance at the convention as a moment of opportunity to celebrate the civil rights movement and the accomplishments of the NAACP.

"I come from a family committed to civil rights," Bush said. "My faith tells me that we are all children of God _ equally loved, equally cherished, equally entitled to the rights He grants us all.

"For nearly 200 years, our nation failed the test of extending the blessings of liberty to African-Americans. Slavery was legal for nearly 100 years, and discrimination legal in many places for nearly 100 years more."

Here's more about his address to the NAACP...

"President Johnson called the right to vote the lifeblood of our democracy. That was true then and it remains true today," Bush said in the first address of his presidency to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's annual convention.

Acknowledging his administration's bumpy relations with black voters, Bush said he wants to change the Republican Party's relationship with African-Americans.

"I understand that racism still lingers in America," Bush said. "It's a lot easier to change a law than to change a human heart. And I understand that many African-Americans distrust my political party.

"I consider it a tragedy that the party of Abraham Lincoln let go of its historical ties with the African-American community. For too long, my party wrote off the African-American vote, and many African-Americans wrote off the Republican Party."

Bush, joined by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and his chief political adviser Karl Rove, spoke as the Senate debated a bill to approve a 25-year extension of expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The House has passed the bill, and the Senate was expected to pass it quickly, propelled by a Republican push to increase the party's credibility with minorities.

I read somewhere that the Bush family have been supporters of the United Negro College Fund. I think it was in a book but I've have to find that book. Either way we know the President's official stance on the Voting Rights Act of 1965.