Digby: Right Wing Populism in a Nutshell

Howie at DWT featured a piece this morning about a fatuous right wing attempt to co-opt the legacy of the great Barbara Jordan in the cause of bigotry. (Don't ask ... ) He quotes a piece from the National Review that spells out their thinking:

On April 15, the editors of the New York Times felt compelled to denounce a Washington Post op-ed by Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), in which he called for reduced immigration to help raise the wages of American workers. The Times' editors were particularly miffed that “Mr. Sessions accuses the financial and political ‘elite’ of a conspiracy to keep wages down through immigration” (“elite” is put in sneer quotes, as if there were no elite). What is important to note is not the Times’ ad hominem attack on Sessions (“choosing . . . to echo an uglier time in our history”) but the fact that the editors believed that the senator’s populist argument required an official response.