Douthat Nails It

Ross Douthat writes politics for The New York Times. He has a column that really tears a strip off the entire political class, left and right, everybody in Washington. Here is the core argument:

The president decided to make gun control legislation a major second-term priority ... with firearm homicides at a 30-year low. Congress is pursuing a sharp increase in low-skilled immigration ... when the foreign-born share of the American population is already headed for historical highs. The administration is drawing up major new carbon regulations ... when actual existing global warming has been well below projections for 15 years and counting.

What’s more, on the issues that Americans actually prioritize — jobs, wages, the economy — it’s likely that both immigration reform and whatever the White House decides to do on greenhouse gases will make the short-term picture somewhat worse.

Douthat concludes that both parties are out of touch and acting helpless. Because it's the Times, he's a little harder on the GOP. It's still a good column.