Bobo's World

Immigration protests

JIM LEHRER: The other thing this week, of course, was the big immigration boycott protest effort on Monday. How do you think it went down politically? DAVID BROOKS: Badly for the immigrant groups. My lesson from the '60s is: Never look at the rallies. Look at the people who are quietly reacting to the rallies. In the 1960s, we had Woodstock, peace marches. If you looked at the rallies, you would have thought, "Oh, big liberal era coming." Well, it was a big conservative era, because there were people, like George Bush and Dick Cheney, looking at that and saying, "I don't like those people." And so I think there is going to be a counter-reaction to the immigrants, in part not so much because of the immigrants, but because, I thought, in some of the rallies, in some of the speakers, a, a sense of entitlement. No sense that this is a complex matter, that we're searching for a center ground. And, second -- and I certainly felt this -- you know, a lot of the people who have been taking the risks on this issue have been moderate Republicans, like John McCain and Chuck Hagel. These rallies were very Ted Kennedy, very union-oriented. It was almost a slap in the face that some of the moderate Republicans who have been really out front on this. And it gave it a partisan edge that it didn't have before, so I think there will be a counter-reaction.