A Failure of Leadership… Whose Leadership?

The New York Times has an editorial up, blasting Republicans for bad leadership on the immigration bill. While reading it, the reader gets the impression that those who oppose the bill, and worked actively against it, are all racists, xenophobes, people who simply hate immigrants:

The anti-immigrant hard-core — no amnesty today, no amnesty tomorrow, no amnesty ever — must not be allowed to hold the nation hostage. Like nativists of generations past, they think the country is being Latinized, and they fear it…

Inaction on immigration carries a brutally high price, but those on the phobic right are willing to mortgage their country’s future to pay it.

Mark Finkelstein read the editorial as well, and noticed a pattern, or comparison:

“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” – George Wallace, from his 1963 inaugural speech as Governor of Alabama.

“No amnesty today, no amnesty tomorrow, no amnesty ever.” – New York Times editorial, June 9th, 2007, describing opponents of the proposed immigration law.

He goes on to write:

In the eyes of the New York Times, you’re a knuckle-dragging nativist, no better than hard-core segregationists of the Jim Crow era.

Now, I know enough people who oppose this immigration bill, and, although I am sure that quite some who oppose the bill are borderline racists, the people I know, are definitely not racists. To them, it is not a matter of race, but of the rule of law.

The Times editorial is incredibly dishonest. It is a very complicated matter; different people have different motives to oppose this bill. Ed Morrissey, for instance, opposes the bill. Everybody who knows Ed, knows that Ed certainly is no racist.