It’s time for Charlie Baker to make up his mind whose side he’s on.

The law-abiding taxpaying U.S. citizens, or the hordes of freeloading illegal aliens swarming across the Rio Grande.

The dithering GOP front-runner put his foot in his mouth again this week, at a debate where he was asked which current Republican politician is his role model.

Charlie’s brain froze up. Oh dear God, they would insist on a Republican. What a conundrum for a Harvard man, being asked to name a good Republican. First there was dead silence, then finally Charlie asked if he could pick Ronald Reagan. No, he was told, Dutch is dead. More silence. Finally he blurted out:

“Jeb Bush.”

Jeb Bush! Another Republican with an asterisk — a RINO. Jeb Bush has only said one memorable thing in his whole career, and that was when he said illegal immigration is “an act of love.”

A love of welfare, certainly.

Baker’s latest faux pas comes just a month after the Obama administration tried to dump hundreds if not thousands of undocumented Democrats on the commonwealth. Gov. Deval Patrick had invited them in — after all, the state only spends $1.8 billion a year on welfare for illegal aliens, so what’s another few hundred million per annum ad infinitum?

The elected officials in the communities that were going to be devastated by this influx of thousands of new Tsarnaevs raised holy hell. But Charlie Baker backed Deval, his fellow Harvard grad.

“I think it’s incumbent on the states to be cooperative with the federal government on this issue,” he said on July 21, “given the humanitarian crisis that’s at hand.”

Charlie, how about the humanitarian crisis facing the U.S. population, being forced to take in millions of disease-ridden, non-English-speaking, unskilled non-workers and having to support them forever? Whatever happened to charity begins at home? This is not their home, Charlie, it’s ours. How about that humanitarian crisis, Charlie?

“I think it’s important,” Charlie continued, “for the federal government to be very specific with the commonwealth about exactly how it’s going to work.”

Here’s how it’s going to work. We Americans will work, and they won’t. We’ll support ourselves, and we’ll support them.

Now, we know how Democrats feel about this — they’re hot to trot to import a new welfare-dependent underclass, to keep themselves in power. They’ve gone from being the party of the working class to being the party of the non-working class.

The other night on WBZ, Democrat candidate Don Berwick was asked if he’d ever heard of Matthew Denice, the Milford motorcyclist run down and killed by a drunken illegal. Berwick had no idea who this U.S. citizen victim was, and when he was told, this moonbat’s moonbat didn’t seem to care.

“You can pick anecdotes to make any point,” Berwick sniffed.

There you have it. Illegal alien wants handout — humanitarian crisis. American killed by drunk illegal alien on welfare — an anecdote.

Charlie, listen to me. You can’t get elected by trying to out-moonbat the moonbats. To paraphrase Harry S Truman, if you give voters a choice between a Democrat and a Democrat, they’ll pick the Democrat every time.

On St. Patrick’s Day at Halitosis Hall, Deval Patrick made a joke: “It turns out that Charlie Baker and I are identical twins.”

It also turns out, Deval wasn’t kidding.

See Howie tomorrow at Tina’s Delicious Ice Cream in Falmouth from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m.