With all the smirking on the left about their electoral victories, it’s important to remember that Democrats haven’t won the hearts and minds of the American people. They changed the people. If you pour vinegar into a bottle of wine, the wine didn’t turn, you poured vinegar into it. Similarly, liberals changed no minds. They added millions of new liberal voters through immigration.

So why are Republicans like Trey Gowdy, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and John Boehner making fools of themselves in order to spot the Democrats three more touchdowns?

The House Republicans’ “Standards for Immigration Reform,” for example, contains this fat, honking nonsense: “One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents.”

As the kids say: WTF?

That may be a pleasant-sounding sentiment, but it has absolutely nothing to do with our country’s history. Not the first thing. Did Republicans really think they could pawn off the idea that our forefathers fought and died at Valley Forge so that illegal aliens wouldn’t have to live in the shadows?

Yeah, it was a long shot. We didn’t know you guys had read the Constitution. We’ll be quiet now.

Apart from the fact that protecting children from the mistakes of their parents has not the slightest connection with the nation’s founding, it’s a ridiculous concept.

Yes, children suffer when their parents break the law. Also when their parents get divorced, become alcoholics, don’t read to them at night, feed them junk food and take them to Justin Bieber concerts. None of that is the child’s fault.

But it’s not the country’s fault either.

If we have to excuse lawbreaking so as not to “punish the children,” there’s no end to the crimes that have to be forgiven — insider trading, theft, rape, murder and so on.

How do you think kids feel when their father has to “live in the shadows” because he committed a rape? The kids did nothing wrong, but they have to go to bed every night wondering: Is tomorrow the day Dad is going to be caught?

How do you function like that? And how awful it must be when their dad is sent to prison! How do you think Jack Abramoff’s kids felt? What about Martha Stewart’s kid?

Why not just forgive the crimes of all perpetrators who have kids? At a minimum, shouldn’t we allow criminals to defer their sentences until their kids turn 26 so they can stay on Dad’s health insurance? Or at least until their kids have gone to college? Chris Christie can give them in-state tuition!

“It’s not the kids’ fault” proves too much. People can get away with anything if they’re willing to use their children as trump cards to avoid the force of law.

The once-respected Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., compared illegal aliens brought here as kids to children who steal a grape or scream in a restaurant:

“When children wander into neighborhood yards, we don’t call that trespassing. When children cry and yell and scream at restaurants or on airplanes, we don’t call that a violation of the noise ordinance. When children eat a grape at the grocery store or eat a piece of candy waiting in line before Mom or Dad pays for it, we don’t have them arrested for petty larceny.”

Yes, but in those cases, both the child and his parents had a right to be where they were — the yard, restaurant or grocery store — when the child suddenly behaved like a child. With illegal aliens, the parents are more like gypsies teaching their kids to beg and pick pockets. The parents forced the kids into being lawbreakers.

Similarly, Palestinians use their children to commit acts of terrorism against Israel, so that when Israel responds, the parents can wail, “They’re bombing children!”

(I thought only liberals couldn’t do analogies.)

Americans are under no moral obligation to admit huge numbers of people who have no particular right to be here just because the Democrats need 30 million new voters.

Why shouldn’t Republicans oppose mass immigration on the grounds that immigrants will vote Democratic? The only reason the Democrats want mass immigration is because they know immigrants will vote Democratic. (Also for the cheap nannies and gardeners.)

Immigration is the “single issue” that decides every other issue. If this country were the same demographically today as it was in 1980, Romney would have won a bigger victory in 2012 than Reagan did against Carter. And we wouldn’t have to hear about soccer all the time.

We’re living in a different country now, and I can’t recall moving! Had I wanted to live in Japan, I could have moved there. Had I wanted to live in Mexico, Pakistan or Chechnya — I could have moved to those places, too.

(Although maybe not. They all have stricter immigration policies than we do.)

I’m sure they’re lovely, but I wanted to live in America. Now I can’t. At the current rate of immigration, it won’t exist anymore. The Democrats couldn’t win elections there, so they changed it.

With the repeal of Obamacare in the balance, I have argued that it’s insane for Republicans to waste resources primarying their own guys in 2014. Even the most heinous Republican can usually argue, “Would you really rather have a Democrat in this seat?”

But any Republican who supports mass immigration — whether with Marco Rubio’s amnesty bill, or idiotic arguments about “not punishing the children” — has forfeited that claim. If the country is going to be ruined anyway, it could not matter less who wins any particular seat on this Titanic.

COPYRIGHT 2014 ANN COULTER

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