It's the Illegal Immigration, Stupid

For RealClearPolitics, Victor Davis Hanson looks at the way the 2016 election is overturning shibboleths of conventional wisdom.

Trump’s candidacy was largely created by underestimated popular outrage over the federal government’s politically motivated refusal to enforce immigration law. That issue divides elites, who are not so much affected by their own open-borders advocacy, from the middle classes, who certainly are.

Trump saw that angry divide and so far has brilliantly capitalized on it. Illegal immigration sent the Trump candidacy from nowhere to front-runner status — in much the same way that uncontrolled borders have all but imploded the once-popular German chancellor Angela Merkel.

That's classic Hanson, linking Trump's rise to the same factors cratering the career of Merkel. Hat tip to the endearingly weird James Carville for his "It's the _____, stupid" trope.