This recent quote from Rush Limbaugh surprised me:
If you want to find the future of the Republican Party and the country, look at California. There isn’t a single Republican in statewide office. There never will be in the future. It’s not gonna happen. The Republican Party practically doesn’t exist statewide.
The quote surprised me because its admission suggests a non-conservative conclusion: the Republican Party had better stop bashing Mexican immigration. It mustn’t make the mistake in 2016 that Republicans made in California in the 1980s and 90s, promoting policy positions akin to those found in the now notorious 1994 anti-immigration ballot measure, Prop. 187.
But this isn’t the conclusion Limbaugh draws. The lesson he takes from Republican decline in California is that Republicans in the 80s and 90s weren’t militant enough; weren’t anti-immigrant enough. They should have used their political power at the time to stop Mexican immigration dead in its tracks:
You can tie the end of the Republican Party in California to 1986, and that was the Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty immigration bill. We’re talking back then 3.9 million illegal aliens granted amnesty. Since then it’s been curtains for the Republican Party, which means constant victory for the Democrat Party.
In other words, conservatives losing on the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill in the 1980s tells contemporary conservatives like Limbaugh that they mustn’t lose on the border fence in 2016. The winning Republican strategy isn’t to make nice with Mexican Americans as a constituency, as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio might want to do, but to arrest outright Hispanic immigration with a southern border fence extending from sea to shining sea:
People are a combination of angry, scared. And there isn’t a single candidate for president addressing the issue in a way that resonates with the American people, particularly Republican primary voters, not one, until Donald Trump comes along. […] Trump wants to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. He wants to deport all undocumented immigrants. They have to go.
Put another way, Limbaugh is talking Custer’s Last Stand for conservatives here. 2016 will mean stopping and reversing Hispanic immigration to America–or witnessing America’s demographic Californication:
When politicians talk about ‘immigration reform’ they mean: amnesty, cheap labor and open borders. The Schumer-Rubio immigration bill was nothing more than a giveaway to the corporate patrons who run both parties.
Talk about drawing a line in the sand! Or, rather, a Great Wall in the sand. If ethnic Chinese can keep foreigners out, why can’t white Americans use their collective majority to staunch Hispanic immigration before it’s too late?
[L]ook at the Chinese. Look at their wall. They got a Great Wall. They built it, how long is that wall? If they can do it, we can do it. If they got the Great Wall, we got the greatest wall. We can build a greater wall, we can do anything we want. We can do it. Who says we can’t do it?
Aside from being racist, this is a politically unachievable and utopian strategy for dealing with America’s ongoing demographic shifts. It’s an escape into pure imagination. In terms of demographics, Californication of the nation as a whole is ongoing, and national Republicans today are repeating the errors of California Republicans of thirty years ago, alienating a fast-growing constituency.
Prometheus Unbound 
“Republicans today are repeating the errors of California Republicans of thirty years ago, alienating a fast-growing constituency.”
Honestly, you should build a wall. There is nothing unrealistic about it, simple construction work. The Finns guard every foot of their border to Russia (which is a similar gradient of wealth). And deporting people is not rocket science either. You simply ask people for id and put them on a bus if they are illegals.
The most important reason to do this is intelligence. California is now, judging by school tests, down to an average IQ of 95. Look at other states with similar IQ levels – Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia etc. Or other countries – Russia, Greece, Vietnam. There is no place on Earth with that IQ level that is doing well except possibly Ireland, which has received a lot of money from the EU over the years. And keep in mind that this is an ongoing process. Drop another five points and you’re on level with Turkey, Laos, or Macedonia. Seriously depressing countries.
There are no exceptions to this rule. Will California be the first?
https://staffanspersonalityblog.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/the-iq-breaking-point-how-civilized-society-is-maintained-or-lost/
Staffan:
How do you round up eleven million people? Where do you bus them to? Recall in 1938 when the Germans rounded up Jews with Polish passports and escorted them over the Polish border and left them there in a no-man’s land? What you’re proposing is a human rights nightmare; a replay of a very dark moment in history from eighty years ago.
And they are only here because Republican and Democrat businessmen want their labor. The powers that be have been treating illegal migration as a solution to labor problems, hence there is no effort at a ‘solution’ other than amnesty.
Agreed. There are of course naive and pathologically altruistic people who endorse this policy, but most of it is driven by simple greed.
The Jews didn’t enter Germany illegally. Their presence in Germany goes back for centuries, they were (and are) an educated elite that contributed to the country’s wealth and culture. They identified as Germans and are to a great extent of German ancestry. Also, America has no plan to invade Mexico or exterminate all Mexicans. Can we agree this was a horrible comparison?
As for the practicality, you bus them to their home country, which mostly is Mexico. They used to live there, and now they can continue to do so. Hardly a “humanitarian nightmare.” Mass immigration will not save the world, but it will hurt America. That’s the only lasting effect it will have.
Staffan:
I’m referring to a specific historical event in 1938 when Hitler had all Jews with POLISH citizenship rounded up and driven back over the border into Poland. Here’s a quote on the history I’m referring to from the Yad Vashem website:
“On October 27, 1938, Nazi Germany carried out the brutal eviction of Jews with Polish citizenship – the first mass deportation of Jews. SS men drove children, elderly, and the sick across the Polish border; most of them were concentrated in abandoned stables near the border town of Zbaszyn, Poland.”
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/about/01/crucial_year.asp
I get that, but I still fail to see how this comparison is reasonable. As it says in the link, this was done as a part of a wider plan exterminate the entire Jewish population. That’s pretty far from returning Mexicans who enter the US illegally back to Mexico. Mexicans are not the object of conspiracy theories, not the victims of pogroms, and there is no plan to exterminate them.