Illegal Immigration Hot

As they travel the triangle between Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, candidates for the Republican nomination for president are learning that illegal immigration is a topic they cannot duck. Likely primary voters or caucus attendees who make the effort to go hear them really care about the immigration issue.

A Washington Post article quotes GOP pollster Jon Lerner this way:

If a candidate is squishy on immigration, that symbolically suggests that he’s probably unreliable on a whole host of other conservative issues.

GOP frontrunner Rick Perry has been "squishy" on immigration; recently sort of against it, earlier more tolerant.