I don’t know who David Brooks is trying to convince with his article on immigration reform, but telling conservatives that our immigration policies should be based on Canada’s is probably about as compelling to them as an argument for basing our health care system on Sweden’s system. That doesn’t mean that he is wrong, though.
His conclusion, however, compels us to ask a question.
The second big conclusion is that if we can’t pass a [immigration] law this year, given the overwhelming strength of the evidence, then we really are a pathetic basket case of a nation.
The question is, if we cannot pass an immigration law this year despite the overwhelming strength of the argument in favor of reform, who will be responsible for that failure? Who is turning this nation into “a pathetic basket case”? And why does David Brooks insist on continuing to associate himself with the culprits? At what point does he look himself in the eye (presumably, using a mirror to do this) and say that he agrees with Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee and Colin Powell and Lawrence Wilkerson and Chuck Hagel?
I know that David Brooks gets paid handsomely to be Charles Krauthammer’s favorite liberal columnist, but it’s a cartoonish existence lacking in any semblance of dignity. Last week, Brooks called for the creation of a second Republican Party for people who don’t live in Jesusland, which caused me to say that he is as stupid as a boiled ham. If he wants a reasonable party that represents the broad center of political opinion in this country…a party that wants to do sensible immigration reform, he should join the Democratic Party. The only reason he doesn’t is because his career would crumble into irrelevance four seconds after he made the jump.
