THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

After all these weeks of seeking to stand out from the crowd, the one issue that seems to clearly separate Republican candidates is immigration. On the one hand there are those who like Donald Trump's concept of driving immigrants from our shores much like the Nazis drove Poles from western Poland in WW II. On the other hand there are those like Jeb! who think they should be removed in an orderly and humane manner with exceptions made for those with money.

The clash over how to deal with immigrants in the country illegally sparked the ugliest exchanges of Tuesday’s debate, as the two sides showed little taste for even a hint of compromise. They may show agreement on the basic outlines of other core conservative issues, notably tax policy, but the schism on immigration shows no signs of fading.

For Republicans, that means a prolonged brawl.

Those candidates marshaling voter anger are determined to clamp down on what they see as an uncontrollable flood of undocumented immigrants. Their followers are roughly the same voters who created and energized the tea party movement six years ago and cheer the small but vocal House of Representatives’ Freedom Caucus. They’re the hard-core conservatives who have had enough of compromise.

Their 2016 heroes, real estate mogul Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, continue to lead the Republican pack and show no signs of fading. Just behind is Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Trump’s rise coincided with his talk about Mexicans and rapists and his insistence he can and must build a wall between the United States and Mexico. Tuesday, he reiterated his view that he’d send undocumented immigrants back where they came from. Cruz chimed in, “If Republicans join Democrats as the party of amnesty, we will lose.”

On the other Republican side are the politically practical conservatives. “Philosophy doesn’t work when you run something,” argued John Kasich, the governor of Ohio. The pragmatists appreciate Kasich and Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, who say Trump’s immigration ideas are nuts.

“It’s a silly argument,” Kasich told Trump of his deportation plan.

Kasich is wrong, Trump's plan is dangerously stupid. Dangerous for the Republican Party because it will drive out the last remnants of sanity from a party with precious little left. And stupid, well if you can't see that you have no business calling yourself human.