Newt Gingrich appears to understand the threat that unchecked illegal immigration is posing -- setting aside issues of national policy -- to the Republican Party, or so it seems from this piece.

Skeptics argue that Gingrich didn't explain "what more the administration should do to seal thousands of miles of border to the south and north." Well, surely if we have weapons that are accurate enough to be able to target missiles down a particuar chimney in Iraq, we have the technology to be able to detect unauthorized border crossings. How about simply setting a laser "trip-wire" along the border -- so that with an unauthorized crossing, a message is sent to a headquarters with a satellite map that shows where the crossing occurred?

As I tried to set out in this piece, it is crazy for Republicans to gloss over the illegal immigration issue. No, it doesn't mean that its core constituency would vote for Hillary Clinton in 2008 -- but it does mean that a third party candidate, running solely on an immigration platform, might be able to peel off enough Republicans to allow Senator Clinton to win with, say, 43% of the vote. Like her husband.