lol I remember playing softball back in that era with guys who definitely thought Reagan was too liberal. And a big part of it was immigration.
But, at least to me, the history is interesting. The Reagan administration made a deal whereby existing undocumented people would be dealt with leniently, in exchange for a border crackdown going forward. And the GOP really did doublecross the border crackdown wing of the GOP. Of course. Because the real power of the GOP was always the group that employed undocumented workers, because they are so cheap and compliant, and costs could be sloughed off on government. (People I know very well in this county were that kind of Republican, and no matter the public rhetoric, they never worried that their supply of labor would be cut off. They know it was all a game.) All while telling their cultural conservatives that they were on their side, and the problems were all the fault of pinko liberals.
This worked fine until the internet. Which begat the Tea Party, which was basically an alliance of Republicans who were sick of being defrauded by their leaders. Since these junior members of the GOP alliance thought of themselves as the real Republicans, we got the term RINO.
Ever since, the dominant Republicans have been struggling to keep control of their party. Their go-to strategy is to double down on the old strategy of cultural conservative rhetoric, because otherwise those people were going to rebel. (It is easy to forget that back in '16, pundits seriously doubted that the GOP could find a candidate to satisfy both wings of the party.) Really, Dump won the nomination mostly by being more credible in his cultural conservative rhetoric than his competitors such as Cruz or Rubio or Bush. And he has been sly enough to keep that turned up high, even as his main real accomplishment has been… lower taxes for the same old power group of the GOP.
Really, and I know this puts me at odds with most people here, I have more sympathy with that angry base than I do with the so-called moderates or RINOs. The moderates were serial swindlers, particularly within their own tent, and their goal was always to keep all the nation’s wealth and power for themselves.
That angry base believed something I don’t, namely that too much/unregulated immigration is a bad thing. But they played by our nation’s rules, elected people who said they would support them, got the laws passed… and watched as the laws were ignored, by their own party, who simply diverted the blame onto liberals. Making them furious and distrust the entire idea of government and rule of law. Yeah, they have racists in their group, but nowhere near all of them are racists. Dump may be infinitely worse than Bush, but my anti-immigration neighbors are most definitely not as objectionable as the respectable county leaders who have never, for an instant, given up on the idea that undocumented workers need to be kept numerous and also in constant legal jeopardy.
