Witness Limbaugh's comments on his show Monday, in which he gamely sought to explain away Trump's apparent flip-flop on deporting all 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Limbaugh basically suggested he never took Trump's mass-deportation policy seriously in the first place. And then he did something astonishing: He basically gave his stamp of approval for a path to legal status for illegal immigrants — or at least acknowledged that it was going to happen.

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"This is all gonna shake out with, okay, are we gonna make them citizens? Is there gonna be amnesty? Are we gonna forgive the crimes?" Limbaugh said. "That's one thing. But then are we gonna go further and make them citizens? Because if we don't make them citizens, they can't vote. And that's where this is gonna shake out."

He added: "If somebody on the Republican side would seriously propose, 'Hey, you know what: You want to forgive them? You want the admission that 11 million, 12 million — whatever number — are not gonna be deported? Fine. But here's where it ends: They don't get to vote. They don't get citizenship for years."

To be clear: This is what many in the conservative movement and media would label as "amnesty."

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And as some have pointed out, Limbaugh didn't always seem to think Trump's mass-deportation talk was bluster.

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As Allahpundit notes, Limbaugh suggested back in November that mass deportation wasn't that tough: "If they say, 'There’s no way we could do it! We couldn’t do it. We couldn’t round up people. We couldn’t find them! We couldn’t separate the families.' Well, there are people that know how to do it, and have been doing it for a long time. All we would have to do is ask them how they do it."

But Limbaugh's forgiveness of Trump's waffling on immigration — the litmus test of all conservative litmus tests — is only the second-best example of the purity gig being up over the past week.

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Last week, Ann Coulter released a book putting Trump on a pedestal -- "In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!" -- and declaring that the only thing he could do that wouldn't be forgiven would be to change his immigration policy.

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So when it quickly became clear Trump was going to change his policy, Coulter seemed to react with the kind of disgust you'd expect. But then a funny thing happened: She did an about-face and basically gave him a pass, too. She told the Washington Examiner: "It mostly worries me rhetorically … I mean, what to do with the illegals already here was never really a big part of it. We’re getting a wall. We’re definitely getting a wall. That’s the one thing we know about a Trump presidency."

See? Deportation was never really a big deal. I mean, at least Trump's heart is in the right place. He's just being practical.

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Except that practicality has never defined this movement. It has pushed ultraconservative and controversial Senate candidates who lost very winnable races for Republicans. It has pushed a government shutdown with nary a chance of success in the name of making a point and trying to undo the Affordable Care Act at any cost. Its membership has increasingly told pollsters that it favored principled stands over compromise.

But as I wrote awhile back, sometimes the tea party seems more interested in poking the bear than in purity.