I love the way Jeb Bush thinks.  He knows that his views on illegal immigration are unpopular, so he thinks that if he talks conservatively enough about other topics, people will overlook his minor policy differences with mainstream America on illegal aliens and vote for him.

Don't laugh.  After all, if he promised to drop marginal rates to zero and to eliminate the income tax and replace it with a national sales tax (which no other candidate has called for!), wouldn't that be worth the price of legalizing the existing legal aliens?  If the answer is yes, then there is a tax rate at which you would vote for Jeb Bush!

So the question becomes, how big a tax cut do you need to vote for Jeb Bush?  When I consider the question, I weigh the many downsides of illegal immigration and assign a point value.  Right now the top marginal tax rate is 39%, or with a extra 4% tax on investments, about 43%, depending on the circumstances (and obviously not everyone pays the top rate).  Bush wants to reduce the top rate to 28% (while raising it at the same time for people who are evil by virtue of the fact that they invest in hedge funds).

So here's what it would take to get my vote:

1) Illegal aliens come here and murder people.  They murder them while target shooting sea lions on the wharfs of San Francisco, they murder while committing rapes, and they murder while driving drunk.  That's pretty severe, so I think I would need a 10% drop in the top marginal rate to compensate for the risk of that.

2) Illegals consume a lot of taxpayer money for schools and medical care.  While my federal tax rates would be lowered, my local income taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes would go through the roof to compensate.  I think I need another 8% drop in the top federal tax rate to make this worth my while.

3) Illegals create large areas of the country where English is not spoken.  Additionally, businesses cater to illegals, forcing me to watch ads in Spanish and making me press 1 all the time to get English-speaking help on the phone.  This is an annoyance, but not as bad as the risk of being killed by an illegal, so I think I need another 4% reduction to compensate for the destruction of our culture and language.

4) Illegals, once legalized, will, by virtue of being poor, unskilled, and on welfare, overwhelmingly vote Democrat.  That will eventually cause my federal taxes to rise again, as well as forcing me to share locker rooms in the gym with women dressed as men.  I think I need another 10% reduction for that.

So to make it worth my while to vote for Jeb, I need a 32% reduction in the top marginal tax rate, to about 11%, if I were paying the top rate, or, more realistically, to about zero to compensate for my current actual tax rate.  Jeb wants brackets of 28%, 25%, and 10%.  That's not zero.  Sorry, Jeb.

Is it so ridiculous to think that Bush can make himself so conservative on one policy to overcome the revulsion to his views on another?  It reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer is deciding whether to vote for a psychopath named Sideshow Bob for mayor of Springfield.

Homer: [looks at ballot information] Hmm...I don't agree with his Bart-killing policy, but I do approve of his Selma-killing policy. [votes for Bob]

Krusty the Clown: Well, he framed me for armed robbery, but man, I'm aching for that upper-class tax cut. [votes for Bob]

This article was written by Ed Straker, senior writer of NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.