That’s what Hillary’s brain, Mark Penn, seems to think.

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, told a British magazine last week that illegal immigrants “may be the most powerful political force in the country.”

In an interview with The Spectator magazine, Penn said, “The most powerful political force in [America], and the most important voting bloc in the upcoming elections, may not even be able to vote — but their cousins can. And that may make all the difference.’

Penn elaborates on the thesis in Microtrends. But here’s a microtrend that he may have missed: The very angry security mom — who can already vote.

The heat under the great melting pot has been turned up, and it’s about to boil over. That was the feeling Monday night in this city’s public works building, where more than 300 people crammed into a hot room to speak their minds about illegal immigration.

State Sen. Jim Ritchie, R-Spartanburg, is the chairman of an illegal immigration reform study committee and hosted the event. Other meetings will follow in upcoming weeks in Pendleton and Charleston.

Monday was a night full of anger, of fear, of feeling discouraged and fed up and of the occasional conspiracy theory – but mostly anger.

“It is an issue that affects every level of society – and we have to do whatever it takes to stop this illegal alien invasion,” said Roan Garcia-Quintana of Mauldin, director of the Americans Have Had Enough Coalition. “Please don’t allow the greed of the few to affect the lives of the many.”

The Americans Have Had Enough Coalition (AAHEC or “ah hec” for short) does the following.

Americans Have Had Enough Coalition is a 501(c)4 non-profit foundation established in 2006 and dedicated to addressing issues with which Americans want to deal, but yet our elected officials tend to ignore.

Or, in the case of Mr. “Soccer Mom” Penn, actively make worse for the purpose of exploiting divisions and getting their bosses elected.

Back to the South Carolina meeting on Monday night. When it comes to border security, voters aren’t fooled by political games and they’re increasingly less intimidated by cries of “racism” and the proliferation of MSM illegal alien sob stories.

Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell has called for a Constitutional Convention to address the problem, though Gov. Mark Sanford’s office issued a statement Monday urging lawmakers to take up statewide reform before starting a process that could take months and ultimately bear no fruit.

“We don’t have a problem with the U.S. Constitution,” said Ken Porter of Holly Springs. “We have a problem because the federal government refuses to enforce the laws we have on the books.”

That was met with thunderous applause. Legal immigrants also see through the political smoke and mirrors.

A handful of legal immigrants spoke in defense of Ritchie’s reform plan.

“We are losing who we are – a real nation, with a real culture, and our own language,” said Miriam Alonso Miles, a Cuban-American from Miami. “I am Latin. But I want to be a part of the great melting pot. I do not want to be someone who divides this country.”

Mark Penn and his boss, evidently, do want to be people who divide this country.

As a senator, Clinton denounced past efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.

In 2006, she criticized a House Republican bill that would have imposed harsher penalties for undocumented workers, charging that some Republicans were trying to create a “police state” to round up illegal immigrants. She later charged that the bill would “criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself,” using that line again in a debate sponsored by the Spanish-language channel Univision in September.

Immigration enforcement polls well enough that the two recent attempts at passing sweeping amnesty, attempts which had heavy White House support as well as the backing of big guns in both parties, failed spectacularly. If Mark Penn and Hillary Clinton really think they can win by courting the relatives of illegal aliens, they’re more beatable than I thought.