It's the Immigration, Stupid

Jonathan V. Last, writes for The Weekly Standard, about the lessons to be learned from the Trump phenomenon.

In 2012, the entire Republican field was caught by surprise when it turned out that immigration was the defining issue of the primary campaign. Without anyone having noticed, immigration displaced abortion as the major litmus test for GOP candidates.

And then, to show that 2012 wasn't an aberration, two years later an unknown, unfunded, econ professor bushwhacked Eric Cantor by 11 points in a Republican House primary in Virginia. His primary issue-indeed, just about his only issue-was immigration.

So Republican strategists (and their candidates) ought to understand that Republican voters care a lot about immigration.

What these voters want isn't a xenophobic nut who's going to bash immigrants-they want a candidate who can do five things:

* Embrace the immigrant heritage of America.
* Distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.
* Make the case that the rule of law still means something, no matter what John Roberts says.
* Articulate that whatever benefits immigration may have, it comes with costs, too, as we see in the murder of Kathryn Steinle.
* Explain that the simple logic of labor markets suggests that whatever we ultimately decide to do about immigration policy, the time to liberalize immigration is not when the real unemployment rate is (at the very least) north of 10 percent. Because when you add workers to an existing surplus of labor, wages will go down.

And that candidate isn't Donald Trump, the "xenophobic nut" referred to above.