Nearly all Republicans, from Dick Cheney to John Kasich, are pulling their hair (if any) out over Donald Trump’s proposal to prevent Muslims from entering the United States.  Just when President Obama’s Oval Office address was being scorned even on MSNBC, suddenly commentary is focused on the constitutionality and morality of Trump’s proposal.  Hillary Clinton must be smiling and planning voter registration drives and counting campaign (and Clinton Foundation) donations to come from Muslims.

Whether or not the public will join the media and professional political class in condemning his proposal is less certain.  Certainly some elements of the public will take each side; it is merely a question of the proportions.

One thing is certain: the wisdom of welcoming hundreds of thousands of Muslims as refugees and immigrants is on the table.  Whether or not you believe the poll Trump cited, it is certain that some percentage of Muslims sympathize with ISIS, some want sharia law in the United States, and many hold deeply anti-Semitic views, as the Quran instructs them.

While some respected political commentators have privately suggested to me that Trump may be a Democrat plant, I doubt it.  He clearly trusts his gut instinct, and I suspect that in the wake of the San Bernardino slaughter, the wisdom of letting Ms. Malik through immigration in Chicago last year certainly seems dubious.

I am not at all certain how this will play out.  Trump’s demise has been predicted more times than I can remember.  And I think it is a legitimate question if we should be adding large numbers of Muslims to our population, considering that it is a certainty that some percentage will hold views anathema to our civic values, and a smaller percentage will act violently in support of jihad.  The Quran and Hadith are indisputably political as well as religious documents, and their politics are incompatible with the U.S. Constitution.  And unlike other religions that have violence in their scriptures, Islam alone is on a violent quest for world domination.

That reality needs to squarely faced.