Continuing, Bopp inferred that by “hateful” Semanko was alluding to perceptions about how the party was treating its first black national chair.

“I know that liberals view any criticism of someone’s conduct to be ‘hateful,’ if the person happens to be black, etc, but I was unaware that we at the RNC had adopted such a political speech code,” he wrote. “In my view, it is not ‘hateful” to decide not to vote for Steele because one views his conduct in office to be detrimental to the interests of the Republican Party and the country, even though he happens to be black. To suggest otherwise is playing the race card, again, and it would seem that your considerable legal talents could better be used mounting a substantive defense of Steele, rather than trying to enforce some non-existent and destructive censorship regime on the RNC.”