Opposing a political office-holder is "hate" if he is black?

The President of the Republican National Committee is Michael Steele, a fairly useless black who appears to have been given the job simply as a black counterweight to Obama -- so Republicans can point to him as showing that they are not racist.

His uselessness has now become a pain to many Republicans, however, and there are various moves to dump him from the job. The legal counsel to the GOP was not happy about that and wrote as follows to the people behind the move to dump Steele (excerpt):

"Concern has been expressed among members of the Caucus that these two anti-Steele pledges/resolutions could be viewed as hateful toward Chairman Steele — regardless of what benign names they may be given,” Semanko wrote. “They are also considered arbitrary in that they, quite literally, purport to support anyone but Chairman Steele, without consideration of any particular candidate's qualifications.”

To this, Bopp responded with seeming fury.

“Norm, are you some liberal professor at some liberal arts college enforcing their ‘hate speech’ prohibition?” he demanded of the Idaho GOP chairman. “Is our brand-spanking-new general counsel now the self-appointed speech police? Or were you asked by Chairman Steele to assume this role?”

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

“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.

Source

The lawyer sounds like a RINO. A holder of ANY political office can be opposed without it being "hate".