THE REEP DEBATE CONSIDERED.

Well, the Republican debate is done, and most of its substance was freeze-dried about 60 years ago. The arguments the candidates made against universal health care, against Obama -- these were the Republican arguments against the New Deal and the Great Society, and the prevalence of generalities was staggering. The only thing new in the Republican catechism is the nativistic backlash against immigrants, which is really the oldest card in American politics. (I'm reading a new book, Our Savage Neighbors, by a young Princeton historian, Peter Silver, that tells the tale (among other tales) of how in 17th-century colonial Pennsylvania the English hated the German immigrants who hated the Irish (Protestant) immigrants who hated the German and the English, and so on, and all wished immigration from (England, Ireland, Germany) would stop. For those seeking a mirror into the seamy side of the American past -- ladies and gentlemen, may we present the Republican Party, 2008.

--Harold Meyerson