"If a child is gasping for air, asthmatic, and he's on the hospital steps, what do the other candidates suggest we do, let him sit there and gasp until he doesn't have any air left and he dies?...No, you don't do that.

Right, but the question is whether the GOP base, not the country as a whole, is "better" than this. That Huckabee actually has to defend such sentiments tells you pretty much all you need to know about the sway that today's nativist right holds over GOP primary politics.