Harry Reid, Racist Anti-Semite?

Harry Reid has been getting a lot of flack for saying on Tuesday that he doesn’t know “how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican.”

Now, in one sense it’s not clear why Harry Reid admitting that he doesn’t know something everyone else knows should be news, since it’s been clear for a long time that there are many well-known things Harry Reid doesn’t know. Mary Katherine Ham pointed out one of them in the Weekly Standard:

Maybe if Rory Reid weren’t having to distance himself from his father to the point of forgoing his last name, Harry Reid would be more familiar with the idea of a Nevadan, Hispanic Republican. In his quest for the Nevada governorship, Rory Reid is getting trounced in polls at the moment by Brian Sandoval, a former federal judge, Attorney General, and … Hispanic Republican.

In another sense largely ignored by the mainstream press, however, Reid’s statement is deeply troubling, suggesting as it does latent (or perhaps not so latent) racism and anti-semitism. Peter Kirsanow begins to raise this issue when he asks,

Would Senator Reid say the same thing about blacks? After all, a sizable cohort of his fellow liberals insist that all “authentic” blacks must be Democrats, their opinions assigned to them by the grievance elite.

Kirsanow, however, believes Reid’s statement is the ethnic equivalent of a racist put-down of Hispanics, since he also asks:

Are the interests of Mexican-Americans indistinguishable from those of Cuban Americans? Are all Hispanics identical regardless of national origin? Are Hispanics nothing more than a fungible political commodity?

He has a point, but I rather think that Reid was, in his fashion, indicating a respect for Hispanics that he lacks for blacks … and for Jews. He expects more from them. He’s shocked that a Hispanic could be a Republican, but he apparently is unshocked by the prospect of black or Jewish Republicans.

One of the things everyone knows about Harry Reid is what he thinks of Republicans: not much, to say the least. Hispanics he expects to know better than to associate with such low life (sort of like “Hispanics don’t let Hispanics vote Republican”), but he has no similar expectation of Jews and blacks.

Harry Reid would no doubt say in his defense, “No, no! You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t discriminate in what I don’t know! I don’t understand how any decent person, of whatever race or color, could be a Republican!”

As I said, the world is full of things Harry Reid doesn’t know.