Kyl has not branded opponents of the bill as racists or nativists. He hasn’t condemned talk radio. He hasn’t refused interviews with critics. Kyl is taking the pounding like a senator should be willing to do when he’s opposite many of the folks who sent him to Washington.

I don’t expect many among the bill’s opponents to accept this perspective, but it makes it no less true. Jon Kyl is doing the hardest thing in politics –standing against his base for reasons of personal conviction and perhaps against his every political instinct in order to do his job as best he sees fit. I appreciate him for the manner in which he has done so, even if I can’t agree that the end result deserves to become the law of the United States.

I really, really wish I and others had persuaded Senator Kyl and through him the majority of the Senate of the absolute necessity of building all 700 miles asap, regardless of expense. When the I-10 Freeway collapsed in the aftermath of an earthquake in California, then Governor Pete Wilson didn’t worry about bidding rules and costs, he let a contract with a huge premium for early completion. And the job got done early.

A broken border is much more important than a broken freeway, but there is none of the urgency that should attend the construction effort. Senator Kyl, Secretary Chertoff, President Bush and other supporters of the bill just don’t see the great upside that I and others do in getting that fencing erected and the Border patrol expanded in record time.

But when the debate is over and the bill either passes or is defeated, Jon Kyl is the same guy who stood rock solid since the war began in defense of the prosecution of that war and in support of the troops, in defense of Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Alito and scores of other judicial nominees, and on the side of countless other conservative causes over a dozen years in the Senate and eight years in the House. He deserves much better than he is getting. When he writes that “If I were the only one writing this bill, it would be very different,” he has earned our trust in his good faith.

We don’t owe Senator Kyl our agreement or our silence, of course, but we do owe him a hearing and a respectful though vigorous and full-throated dissent, one that is coupled with a recognition of his past, present and future service. If you have trouble giving him both, then you have lost track of the central proposition that distinguishes conservatives from the far and sometimes not-so-far reaches of the left: Justice.