Prop 187 On a National Scale

It's hard to imagine that the GOP was once competitive in California, but it was.

All that changed when Pete Wilson latched the GOP onto the anti-immigrant boat via prop 187 (and grainy, ominous ads of Mexicans).

Pete Wilson won the election that year: a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.

By losing the Hispanic vote, The GOP basically ceded the most populous state on the national electoral scene.

Apparently the GOP loved the outcome so much they decided to nationalize the result.

GW Bush is a miserable failure, but one thing he did do well was to electorally blunt the Hispanic advantage that the Democrats had. This is not to say he's against some limitations on immigration, but that he was able to do it without coming across as being vicious and xenophoic.

And even that was too accommodating for the GOP. Now thanks to the like of Tancredo, the GOP has basically lost an entire segment of the population:

Hispanics

McCain 28
Obama 69

That's no big deal... except for the fact that they live in battleground states such as Florida, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado. Furthermore, the rest of the population, outside of the Tancredo crowd, simply aren't as worked up about this issue: it's simply not as important as all the other issues this year.