“Paris is worth a Mass,” Henry of Navarre supposedly said before converting to Roman Catholicism and becoming king of France in the 16th century. Similarly, staving off Russia, and perhaps defeating it without firing a shot, is worth $40 billion.

The GOP has pioneered a dangerous conceit: that high office, once held to be the proper province of the serious, the learned and the prepared, has now been democratized till it can be fulfilled by any unremarkable twit with the gumption to seek it and the ability to convince the average Joe or Jane that ignorance, immaturity, hostility toward liberal values and lack of impulse control constitute authenticity.

Immigration has been hotly contested throughout our history, and is an inherently highly emotive issue, involving the composition of our polity and core questions of national identity. It can only inflame the issue further to explicitly weaponize demographic change, as the left has for decades now. We should have an immigration policy that serves the national interest, not the narrow interest of one political party.