"Meet the Press", hosted by David Gregory, is one of the nation's oldest and most respected Sunday news shows. Each week it invites noteworthy political leaders and opinion makers to deliver their views and discuss them with the host and in turn have them discussed by a panel of political commentators.
"Meet the Press" is decidedly "mainstream", which means that it hews reflexively to the existing and up-to-the-moment conventional wisdom and the narrative consensus that is presumed to exist in tandem with it. That is why and how, as Ross Douthat has pointed out, that it is possible, "you end up with the major Sunday shows somehow and journalists neglecting to invite a single anti-amnesty politician on a weekend dominated by the immigration debate. It's how you end up with officially nonideological anchors lecturing social conservatives for being out of step with modern values".
From time to time, the program does deliver "news" in the form of administration views or policy trial balloons. But mostly it is useful for showing the on-record policy premises and thinking of those who appear.
Every once in a while, though, you can get a real debate, even on immigration:
Gregory: Let me ask you about immigration. President Bush — former President Bush — is expected to speak out about immigration reform this coming week. He could be a very strong voice within the Republican Party after the Senate has passed immigration reform to put pressure on the House. How will you respond to that? And do you think we're going to get a bill in the end out of the House?
Rep. Labrador: You know, I hope we're going to get a bill. I think immigration reform is necessary. As you know, I have been negotiating on immigration reform now for some time. But my concern with the Senate bill is that they put the legalization of 11 million people ahead of security. The legalization happens first, and then the security happens second. And I think the American people are not going to stand for that. In fact, if you look at this Obamacare debacle that they have right now, this administration is actually deciding when and where to — to actually enforce the law. And that's what some of us in the House are concerned about. If you give to this administration the authority to decide when they're going to enforce the law, how they're going to enforce the law, and you — you tell them that it's okay if they decide if there's going to be 20,000 troops or if there's going to be — I mean 20,000 border patrol agents or it's — or they get to determine when the border is secure, I can tell you that Janet Napolitano has already said that the border is secure. So what's going to happen is that we're going to give legalization to 11 million people and Janet Napolitano is going to come to Congress and tell us that the border is already secure and nothing else needs to happen.
Note again Rep. Raul Labrador's mixture of the agreement ("immigration reform is necessary") with the legitimate concerns ("if you give to this administration").
That nuanced view of support for immigration reform coupled with a specific set of concerns led to Round 2, a few-holds-barred exchange between Rep. Labrador and David Brooks, a moderate conservative commentator for the New York Times.
Next: Rep. Labrador Meets the Press: Round 2
