See, for all their huffing and puffing about lawlessness, Beltway Republicans are with Obama, not with the country, on mass legalization for illegal aliens. They don’t like the border’s being overrun, of course; but for years they have been quite content with non-enforcement of the immigration laws. Washington may as well hang up a neon sign broadcasting the message that most any alien who manages to get here can stay here.

As usual, for Democrats, this non-enforcement is a well-thought-out strategy to tilt election demographics in their favor; while for Republicans, it represents wishful thinking at best, and, more likely, sheer stupidity. Their strategists tell them Hispanics are the dynamic electoral constituency that will grow to love the GOP if only Republicans show “compassion”; their Chamber of Commerce patrons squeeze them to keep open the low-wage-labor spigot; and they convince themselves that millions of unassimilated, low-skill, high-maintenance, natural Democrats are really Republicans waiting to happen.

However boneheaded this calculation may be, the thing to bear in mind is that it is a political calculation.