This is about as good a conversation as you’ll hear between an outside-the-beltway conservative and and inside-the-beltway conservative about potentially troublesome legislation on the horizon.

Is it fair to describe Rubio as inside-the-beltway? In the sense that he’s a sitting U.S. Senator, it is. He’s not exactly “Of Washington” yet, though, so we’ll qualify it.

But in talking with the occasional Congressman and elected officials in general, you very often run into some of what Limbaugh does in this video – namely, that you express a point of view that pretty much all conservatives share, and in particular things which are quite obvious about the Left, and while said elected official doesn’t disagree with you they just won’t commit to fighting the hard fight. Or that they won’t act toward the Left the way the Left acts toward them. And maybe, you think, your approach is wrong – but on the other hand, the typical politician’s approach is what got us in the mess we’re in. And how come they can’t see that?

It’s frustrating, and you can pick up a lot of this in Limbaugh’s side of the conversation.

Rubio does handle this dynamic well. But Limbaugh expresses to him something which basically amounts to look, the Democrats are not acting in good faith here and you know they’re going to deal this immigration thing from the bottom of the deck, so by trying to cut a deal on immigration you know you’re setting yourself up to get burned when they’ll just refuse to enforce it. And while Rubio makes a good point in saying that Obama won’t be president forever and you’ve got to make policy based on having a law that actually gets enforced, Limbaugh wins on that one.

That said, even if the immigration plan Rubio is signing on to gives you the heebie-jeebies you can’t deny Rubio comes off as highly intelligent, passionate and committed. He’s impressive. And while he might be a little naive on immigration and while he has to know that getting the border certified as secure in any honest way when the Democrats have visions of 11 million machine-driven friendly voters dancing in their heads is a fantasy, you have to admit he’s as forceful an advocate for conservative principles as you can find in the GOP. He’s a happy warrior. And if you can’t root for him, even on as scary an issue as immigration, you might want to recalibrate your expectations of politicians.