Trump’s Immigrant Bashing Isn’t Winning the GOP White Voters

The Trump candidacy is a referendum on one thing: Anti-immigration restrictionism. He has wavered on many things, but not on his hardline immigration position.

In fact, his plan to seal the border and cut back on all forms of legal immigration has literally been plucked from the ultra-restrictionist ideas voiced by the nativist Center for Immigration Studies and echoed by the National Review Online. Their electoral theory is that what the GOP loses in Latino voters through this hard-assed immigration plan, it’ll gain in seven million missing white voters who sat out the last election. Call it the Latino-version of Richard Nixon’s southern white strategy.

So how is it working out so far for the GOP?

If current polling trends hold, not very well, I note in my latest column at The Week. Although admittedly polls have tightened since the revelation last Friday that the FBI was investigating the treasure trove of Hillary e-mails found on Anthony Weiner’s computer, “Trump’s candidacy is [still] shaping up to be a living refutation of that argument,” I note. Indeed, with the exception of Iowa and maybe Ohio, it is hard to think of any swing state where Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric will provide a November boon for Republicans. It has, however, put the GOP on track to lose four or more swing states.

Go here to view the column.