How come the most authentic anti-illegal candidates -- the ones who have been advocating a big fence and no amnesty for years -- were so hopeless? My own views are more liberal on this, so I'm tempted to believe it's because building the fence and deporting millions of people simply isn't what people want to do.

But as Tancredo pointed out, now all the GOP candidates push these same ideas! Really, immigration hardlining is just a new religion. Its early disciples are the weirdos, those harrowed souls chased in their dreams by the specter of Mexicans scurrying across rivers, whose very fervency marks them as people not to be taken seriously. But as one of those souls, the decision whether to throw your weight behind fellow travelers -- Tancredo, when he was in the race, or now Fred Thompson -- versus Romney or Huckabee is like the choice between keeping trudging in exile with the early purist martyrs or becoming a well-fed court priest for the Emperor Constantine. So you have a suspicion the Emperor converted just to expand his power. But, really, when you're set up in gigs that nice and given so many people to preach to, who cares?