Freep Calls Gov Snyder Hateful Bigot

The Detroit Free Press in an editorial today says Republican’s have been successful over the past 50 years by using bigotry and hatred to get elected.

The paper in the front page screed goes even further and in effect calls Governor Rick Snyder a bigot using fear to label Muslims. Really? I might remind the editorial board that Snyder has been a loud proponent of immigration from the Middle East.

Here is an excerpt from the histrionic and inflammatory writing:

That leading Republicans have denounced Trump provides only modest cover. Trump's soaring support reveals harsh truths about the party base that so-called establishment Republicans have built, with fear and bigotry and xenophobia, with the notion that a fictitious, former America should be our ideal — ignoring the reality of life for women and minorities during that golden age — and most harmfully, by perpetuating the idea that success for others, particularly non-white, non-Christian, non-heterosexual, non-male others, means they will lose. It's a false equation, but one that has given Republican candidates significant traction among some demographies.

This is the subtext for the last 50 years of Republican politics: fear. And hatred.

Those are the currents that shaped Gov. Rick Snyder's response to the ISIS attacks in Paris last month. Snyder, who for much of his administration has touted a pro-immigration stance, announced that Michigan would "press pause" on any effort to welcome Syrian refugees.

Snyder's rhetoric is more measured than Trump's, but it is rooted in the same tacit endorsement of bigotry that says any Muslim could be a threat. Both men legitimize hatred with their words, to dangerous effect.

I must congratulate the Detroit Free Press for stereotyping and marginalizing an entire cross-section of Americans while complaining about a few of those people singling out and marginalizing other people. Nicely done.