Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

Republican presidential candidates -- all, save Tom Tancredo, bless his heart -- appeared last night at a Florida debate in which the questions were translated from Spanish, and the candidates' answers, translated into Spanish, were beamed out to watchers of the Spanish-language network Univision. All the big-head guys took great pains to re-dress their former anti-immigrant rhetoric in a new I'm-perfectly-harmless wardrobe.

Though, according to this AP report, none of the candidates felt they could renounce their original campaign positions on immigration. They abandoned, however, the hot, angry rhetoric of previous debates. No scratching and clawing over who disdains illegals more, Giuliani or Romney, while coddling them in "sanctuary cities" and on "sanctuary home lawns." No Duncan Hunter bragging about machine-gun nests on his mile-high border wall.

Only John McCain, the single Republican candidate for president on that stage who has been previously considered the least bit "soft" on immigration, correctly blamed "the rhetoric that many Hispanics hear about illegal immigration" for the fact that Hispanics now favor Democratic candidates by 57% (to 23% who favor Republicans, according to a new Pew Hispanic Center poll).

It's hysterical, this mincing ... both the walking-on-eggshells of this bunch of political ruffians and their evident delusion that Hispanic voters are that easy to fool.

"Not a single candidate referred to them as 'illegal aliens,' a term many Hispanics find objectionable."

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA.

'Cause, once the big heads get away from that Spanish-language venue, they'll return to bashing "illegals" with the gusto characteristic of small minds who believe unquestioningly in the power of The Wedge.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with and catalog all of "Their Most Embarrassing Moments." Last week it was Hucklebee's wrapping himself like a mummified communion wafer in Christian piety and then Romney's deer-in-the-headlights attempt to get back into the Jesus-is-my-BFF piety contest, followed by Fred Thompson's saying that Jesus was just all right with him, though he doesn't go to church and doesn't intend to start until he's elected president.

These masters of manipulation. These legends of legerdemain. These wizards!