Perhaps it was a first: a man winning a debate by not showing up. That’s my take, anyway, that Donald Trump prevailed at Thursday night’s GOP debate. Although, something curious did happen after the event that gives me pause for thought, but more on that later.

The debate served to draw a significant and sharp contrast on today’s top (or almost so) issue, immigration — between Trump and the rest of the field. When the Fox News moderators showed Marco Rubio on video repeatedly saying he wouldn’t support amnesty, even by another name, and then Megyn Kelly pointed out that he went on to be part of scamnesty group the Gang of Eight, it was a stake-through-the-heart moment. Even more amusingly, Jeb Bush chimed in and tag-teamed with Kelly; he emphasized that not only did Machiavellian Marco support the amnesty, but repeated at least twice that Rubio asked him to support it as well. Bush said that he did so and that what Rubio did was the right thing, but then castigated the Florida senator for cowardly retreating from his position. So there you had one guy trying to wriggle out of supporting stupidly disastrous policy being cornered by another guy who was proud of his stupidity. I guess it’s what happens when a wholly resistible force meets a thoroughly movable object. But three things occur to me:

1. I now completely believe the reports about large non-indigenous snakes invading Florida.
2. Oranges aren’t the only mandarins in the state.
3. Trump should send Bush a check (if I didn’t know better, I’d think Bush signed on with the Trump campaign).

Video of Senator Ted Cruz supposedly supporting the Gang of Eight bill also was played, and, even though Cruz said he was manipulating the Democrats at the time, I suspect it didn’t help him with the voters. Cruz explained his position better in an interview with Kelly after the debate than he did during it, pointing out that he was exposing liberal hypocrisy. To wit: the Democrats claimed they just wanted to “bring people [illegals] out of the shadows,” so Cruz introduced an amendment that would remove the promise of citizenship from the bill but allow for “legalization.” The idea was, “Okay, if emigration from Shadowville is all you want, legalization will do it.” But the Democrats balked, said Cruz, saying they’d kill the bill if it had such an amendment. This put the lie to their claims, proving (again) that what they’re interested in is importing undocumented Democrats, as 70 to 90 percent of the illegals will vote Democrat upon being naturalized.

Nonetheless, understanding that kind of political maneuvering takes attentiveness and sophistication, so it’s hard to imagine the video of Cruz helping his cause.

Most striking, though, was the complete dislocation from reality exhibited by all the candidates on terrorism. The night was heavy with talk about building up the military and fighting Da’esh (ISIS), and securing our open back door to Mexico was mentioned. And rightly so. Yet not one candidate would second Trump’s call to suspend Muslim immigration, and some, such as Bush, criticized the idea. Of course, the phenomenon is understandable. Westerners are awash in immigrationism, multiculturalism, religious-equivalence doctrine and stupidity (but I repeat myself), and a fault common to man is that a building has to fall on him before he’s able to break free from established thinking patterns. But here’s the reality:

We suffer from a collective delusion.

FACT: Terrorism today is a Muslim phenomenon, meaning, virtually all the terrorists now bedeviling the West are Islamic jihadists. And it’s just a numbers game: if over time we admit one million Muslims and just one-tenth of one percent are terrorist-minded or will become so, that’s 1000 dangerous jihadists.

My figure is likely conservative. But the point is that if this were the 1970s, when the Weathermen were planting bombs, and we knew that a certain class of prospective immigrants shared their ideology, would we admit them? Look, here’s the reality:

We’re under no obligation to accept any class of immigrants — or any immigrants at all. Where is it written that the U.S. must be the flophouse, soup kitchen and doormat for the world? If immigration doesn’t benefit the host country, guess what?

It doesn’t happen.

Period. Full stop. We don’t have to explain it. We don’t have to apologize for it. We don’t have to feel bad about it. And if it’s questioned, our only response should be, “So when did you become a traitor?”

The issue of Muslim immigration came up when the debate moderators played a video from the YouTube audience, from a “Muslim” young lady who lamented the rise in anti-Islamic feeling in America. I have her descriptive in quotation marks because she was quite Western, exhibiting a sartorial splendor that would inspire a beating by Da’esh and speaking perfect English. She said that the anti-Islamic sentiment would only encourage Muslims to become terrorists, and Bush chimed in and agreed.

This is lunacy. It’s this inane, projection-inspired idea that unless we’re truly, amazingly, unbelievably nice — bend over backwards and prove to the world what lovable, harmless little fuzz balls we are — well, these jihadists are really, really gonna’ get mean.

The truth is quite the opposite. Bush et al. should watch this interview with Dr. Nicolai Sennels on the “psychology of Islam and Muslims.” Dr. Sennels is a Danish psychologist who for years worked in prison with Muslim youth. Among other things, he points out that Islamic culture is radically different from what you’re used to: Muslims view displays of anger and violence as synonymous with manliness, and they respect shows of force.

And if you react to aggression with passivity and kindness, they view it as weakness and hold you in contempt. They not only will think you can be vanquished — but that you deserve to be.

One might also want to ponder this German study involving 45,000 young people; it found that while increasing religiosity among Christian youths made them less violent, increasing religiosity among Muslim youths actually made them more violent.

Wake up, you people in the Bushes; it’s later than you think.

Now we come to the curious post-debate happening. Pollster Frank Luntz conducted a focus group, and one question concerned their feelings on Rubio; you know, the guy not only proven via video to be completely dishonest, but who supported a culture-rending scamnesty bill. When Luntz asked how many in the group had planned on voting for Machiavellian Marco coming into the debate, about three people raised their hands. And after the debate?

Forty to fifty percent of those present did.

Beam me up, Scotty. It just renews my faith in my lack of faith in the average voter. But the explanation probably lies with a study some years back showing that if a person is articulate and eloquent, he’ll sway people regardless of what he actually says. It’s style over substance, and the slick-talking, eye-candy Florida python has the former in abundance.

Having said this, my guess is that Rubio only swayed some undecided low-info voters, and it certainly won’t be enough to change his fortunes. As for the biggest presence on stage Thursday night, it was a man who wasn’t even there.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

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