“YOU SAY that you’re a full-scale Ronald Reagan Republican, and yet, as you mentioned, you opposed the troop surge and you support comprehensive immigration reform. Are those the stands that Ronald Reagan would take?” Thus did Fox News debate moderator Chris Wallace put Senator Sam Brownback on the spot last Tuesday night in South Carolina. Brownback quickly dodged the Iraq question before noting that Reagan himself endorsed a de facto “amnesty” for illegal immigrants in 1986.

As Fareed Zakaria points out, the Gipper had earlier commented, in a 1977 radio broadcast, on the dearth of apple pickers in New England. “It makes one wonder about the illegal-alien fuss,” Reagan said. “Are great numbers of our unemployed really victims of the illegal-alien invasion, or are those illegal tourists actually doing work our own people won’t do?” Of one thing he expressed certainty: “No regulation or law should be allowed if it results in crops rotting in the fields for lack of harvesters.”