Stacking the Deck

Interesting to note that, for an immigration debate this morning, Tim Russert chose to host a face-off between Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) and Patrick Buchanan. The upshot is that NBC News chose an official representative of the Democratic Party, and then presented Pat Buchanan as the presumably conservative response to that view.

That's unfair and misleading. Pat Buchanan's views -- and even more, the way he presents them -- don't necessarily represent the mainstream of the Republican Party. Many Republicans are willing to consider some kind of regularization for the people who are already here, so long as the border has been effectively secured and national security concerns have been addressed. They aren't comfortable with talk of a "Third World Invasion" and other inflammatory rhetoric employed by people like Buchanan.

Russert and NBC News essentially took a member of the Democratic mainstream to represent Democrats and then an angry, often anti-Republican populist to "represent" Republicans. Where was John Cornyn, or Mitch McConnell, or any other real spokesmen on this issue for Republicans?

Why did Russert and NBC stack the deck to try to make Republicans -- and/or opponents of the immigration bill in its current form -- look like anti-immigrant bigots?