A brilliant piece by Peter Beinart this morning in America’s Newspaper of Record (but the article is not yet online as I write). Beinart suggests that the Democrats are moving towards a full embrace of Lou-Dobbs-ism . Beinart is writing from a New Republic squishy-left standpoint, but every conservative should read this piece.

Beinart points out that all the Dems need do to be full Dobbsians is to embrace Dobbs’s very strong stand (“Dobbs is downright obsessive about the issue,” says Beinart) against illegal immigration. He then produces some signs that the Dems are, in fact, doing this:

“Democratic challengers are staking out immigration positions to Bush’s right. And Democratic incumbents are doing the same thing. …In the Senate, a large majority of Democrats just voted to build a fence along the Mexican border. … Many liberals would like to pick and choose their anti-globalization politics — arguing for more regulation of international trade and investment, but resisting punitive measures to regulate the flow of international labor. Morally, that’s perfectly defensible. But politically, it is likely to fail…..”

[Derb] Immigration enforcement is the golden amulet for the Dems. If they pick that up and run with it, Republicans could be out of power for a generation. You think Democrats don’t know this? Plenty know it, and the rest will catch on.

[Amongst other things, this disposes of Stanley Kurtz’s argument for voting Republican in the midterms–that only by doing so can we be sure of good immigration-law enforcement. A better strategy for those of us who care about the National Question would be to (a) send a copy of Peter Beinart’s article to evey Democrat we know, and (b) stay home Election Day.]