Hullabaloo: Trump (race) card

says about the GOP

it’s important to remember in all of this that GOP’s immigration problem didn’t originate with Trump’s latest histrionics. Ever the opportunist, Trump has merely latched himself onto a sentiment that has become more and more abundant among the GOP electorate in recent years. One only has to look at the political earthquake that brought down the career of House Majority leader Eric Cantor in a primary election last year. Then as now, the beltway establishment ignored the obvious implications of a development that probably should not have been so shocking. They insisted that Cantor lost due to local concerns, and because the candidate who beat him, David Brat, ran on a libertarian platform they insisted was sweeping the Republican Party. The fact that Ingraham and the right-wing media backed Brat because of his strong anti-immigration message was seen as irrelevant. But it wasn’t.

During the border crisis last summer, when child refugees from Central America were converging on the border, Brat told Ingraham:

I think you referred to it in the news, I know Mark Levin did last night, the Washington Times reported 60,000 kids are expected to cross the border at 225.00 a day per child., and big business gets the cheap labor that’s what they want, Eric Cantor’s their guy, but who has to pay the 225.00 a day per kids who are coming over the border in what some are calling a humanitarian crisis because Eric Cantor is sending all the wrong signals? … He wanted to put illegal immigrants into our military, which makes no sense. You’ll have non-citizens in one of the most key positions in our society, serving in the most honored spot.

Despite the beltway’s insistence on ignoring the obvious, Brat’s upset had a profound effect on politics from the moment he was elected. As the Wall Street Journal reported:

[A] majority of GOP Members wanted an immigration reform to pass as long as they didn’t have to vote for it. Before Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s primary loss in Virginia last month, the House leadership’s private whip count was 144 GOP votes in favor of passing a bill this year. Afterwards it was half that.

The anti-immigrant faction flexed its muscle and scared the Republicans into submission. And here we are today.