Probably a continuing realignment. The GOP increasingly gets stronger with WWC. Maybe some rebound in the suburbs if they drop the culture wars.
They will never drop the culture wars. The base does not care about policy, they care *only* about culture war red meat.
They did the complete opposite of what their 2012 autopsy told them to do and will do the complete opposite of what their 2020 autopsy will tell them to do.
The autopsy was written by, for and off, the tools of the GOP donor class and that is precisely why it did not stand a chance with the base or with the swing voters that actually decided the 2012 election in Ohio, Iowa and Pennsylvania.
If Romney had obtained 70% of Hispanics, he still would have lost the election and furthermore, the presumption that simply endorsing legalization and then continuing to advance the Koch brother's agenda on the economy is a winning strategy for minorities, much less working class voters is not only misguided, it is insulting.
This is the Paul Ryan mindset on how Republicans should operate and govern and it is not without reason that I have thus proceeded to link and compare Ryan with Speaker Winthrop as far back as 2016 and not surprisingly they both ended up retired by age 50 and frankly without a natural political home as a result of shifts in the political landscape.
Any autopsy on the Trump period needs to account for why Trump got nominated and that is because the establishment candidates did go all in on the 2012 autopsy on immigration and the base said no thanks and went to the one person who didn't, namely Trump. When you put all of your sane eggs in one basket and the voters reject that basket, the first egg with a different basket no matter how crazy ended up nominated.
Immigration Skepticism/Resistance shall we say as a general term is going to have to be treated as a GOP litmus tests along with taxes, abortion and guns at this point. Now, there is a broad range of specific policies from David Perdue's support for merit based immigration, to Pat Toomey's opposition to sanctuary cities and many more as well as the presentation and rhetoric surrounding it that can make this more palatable or appealing.
Republicans and Conservatism are going to have to "resolutely" as Corey Booker (the real one, not the poster formerly known as such) stated in the hearings earlier, condemn all forms of racism, bigotry and even while at the same time in a responsible fashion articulating an alternative view on the immigration, and what that entails is up for discussion.
