Mitt calculates quickly that attacking John McCain is far more hopeless a prospect than attacking the Z-Visa, the Pinata at the center of the immigration bill. Gets a round of applause for his trouble. McCain insists that we prevent de facto amnesty with de jure amnesty. Touches off a miniature firestorm for his trouble.

Does anyone believe Rudy’s read all 400 pages of the bill?

Mitt calculates quickly that advocating the enforcement of standing law is far more hopeful a prospect than advocating the enforcement of new laws. How can McCain compete onstage?

Hunter piles on “disasterous” McCain, schemingly slow Bush, attacks the bill as the megalo-corporo-bureaucratic monstrosity it seems to be. He seems far less scattershot and irrelevant than last time around. Can’t say the same for Brownback, can’t say anything for Gilmore. Thompson? The very mention of his name by Ruxpin launches the crowd, and everyone onstage, into varying degrees of fantasy, not necessarily relaxing.

Ruxpin asks the asinine “What about a Canadian Fence?” question. Ron Paul answers No in one word and carries on to reveal illegal immigrants as scapegoats for a falsely free economy. Scattered applause.

Official English? McCain starts talking about Native Americans. But who has the paradigmatically better case than illegal immigrants for having their way on American soil than the Original Inhabitants?

In comes Fred Thompson, in spectral form, on the back of a nightmarishly bad joke. Gilmore declares himself the Forty Year Old Battler and Thompson — sorry, Fred Thompson — a question mark. Terrible jokes continue as Ruxpin asks Tommy Thompson, who bears his humiliation with dignity. And then proves how conservative he is by declaring himself Mr. Veto. And is silenced.

That’s IT on Fred Thompson? Once again the Big Three get off Scot Free.