Jeffrey Lord in the American Spectator:

The other day Arizona’s Republican Senator Jon Kyl sat down with the Wall Street Journal for a discussion about all the heat he’s taken for what the paper termed Kyl’s “efforts to forge an immigration compromise”…

…Reading the Kyl interview is a vivid exercise in understanding exactly what spending too much time in Washington can do to even someone generally viewed as a conservative. Here is Mr. Kyl attacking the concept that he and his fellow Senators (including his Arizona seat mate, presidential candidate John McCain) actually support an amnesty bill. “It’s impossible to make the existing system work so we have to change the law, and changing the law requires Democratic votes, so you have to make concessions to Democrats.”

In a blink Kyl reveals the mindset for which Washington is so notorious. He is not in the Senate to represent the conservative principles which he presented to Arizona voters. No, he is in the Senate to “make concessions to Democrats.”

….When Kyl says in a remarkable statement that “Democrats won’t allow” a policy of “enforcement first,” he epitomizes the idea that it is a Senator’s job to represent the Senate and Washington to America instead of the reverse. It is no wonder that conservatives’ instinctive response is to go out, change the debate, and get votes to change Senators. They feel not the slightest obligation to “work with” Ted Kennedy. To the contrary, they believe their job is to get more votes in the Senate to defeat Ted Kennedy. It is a fundamentally different approach to the idea of leadership in Washington than that of Mr. Kyl.