Trump's border hawk policies are objectively to the right of the soft on border policies of the Bush era. When Bush was president only Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter were obsessed about illegal immigration.
Not true: Jeff Sessions, David Vitter, Tom Coburn, Jim DeMint, Wayne Allard for the Senate, as well as several people in the House: Sue Myrick, Virgil Goode, JD Hayworth, Dana Rohrabacher, Lamar Smith, Elton Gallegly, Brian Bilbray, Sam Graves, Steve King (he was just less vocal about it then), and many many others cared about it.
Sorry, I meant they were the only presidential candidates who cared about it. Though I suppose in 2012 Virgil Goode did run under the Constitution Party.
The failure of the 2007 debate coincided with McCain campaign's temporary collapse and the high point of Mitt Romney's bid (when he had leads in IA, NH, MI And NV), while Rudy dominated the irrelevant national polls. Fun times! If Mitt Romney had any significant appeal outside of rich and middle class "Conservative" suburbs, he would have run away with the nomination at that point. His narrow base though allowed him to be knocked out when the vote consolidated to Huckabee on one side and McCain on the other.
It's interesting that for a moment after 2008 Sarah Palin, who's not much of a border warrior, was the movement conservative icon from that election. Was Mitt Romney for border enforcement already back then before 2012? If so it's interesting how that topic didn't become a big issue yet, I suppose the Iraq War overshadowed it.
Romney's national profile was built off border hawk positioning. In 2006 the dominant contenders for GOP were Rudy and McCain. Both had appeal to suburbs and both supported amnesty/comprehensive immigration reform.
Romney got in and essentially ran to their right on immigration and host of other issues. But it was immigration that allowed for his message to stick in spite of all the other weaknesses that his campaign had, it was one trump card he had, even against Huckabee who passed in state tuition benefits for illegals (Romney campaigned against magnets for illegal immigration and this was one such magnet).
Identity mattered a lot and it still does. Romney is a candidate tailor made for a narrow niche of voters, the kind that dominated Orange County, Pheonix/Denver/Las Vegas/Atlanta Suburbs. Rich, Reaganite Boomers, who were concerned about immigration from a mostly crime and demographic tension standpoint (Trump approaches it from an economic and demographic tensions standpoint). McCrory ran a very similar campaign to Romney's in NC in 2008, promising to crackdown hard on "crime, gangs and illegal aliens". McCrory way outperformed McCain in metro Charlotte area and especially the Charlotte suburbs.
Huckabee didn't really appeal to these more high end voters as he was more of a down market candidate who scared Romney supporters. They viewed him as a pro-life liberal who would spend like crazy and get away with it because he was "more pro-life". In terms of identity though, Huckabee comes across as one of the people in a place like rural Missouri or Georgia, while Romney "looked like the guy who comes to lay you off from your job" as Huckabee put it.
If you think about the Southern GOP as being divided between two groups:
1. Sort of a low country, high end fiscal conservative (many of whom tended to be more in favor of immigration and trade), and were more pro-war. These people are the political heirs and they themselves in some cases, the people who first went Republican in the South. Transplants, middle class professionals, military and ex-military, and while religious it wasn't to the exclusion of the other points. These are the heirs of the Thurmond voters in 1948.
2. Socially Conservative populists, who tended to favor pork barrelling politicians and were more populist on trade and later immigration issues, while also having an isolationist history. They derive from two places, ancestrally Republican mountain vote in places like Tennessee and also up country whites that had only joined the GOP post Clinton. This latter source created great against for those in category one and Mark Sanford (most definitely from group 1), lamented the ex-Democrats who joined because of abortion and got elected to the legislature only to continue their big spending ways.
Huckabee was perfect for group number and Huckabee criticized Bush for having a "bunker mentality" on Iraq, was accused of being a big spending "pro-life liberal" by Romney supporters and had raised taxes in Arkansas.
It is less well known, but McCain's family has deep south roots in Mississippi and thus was very strong with the former low country group. McCain was very supportive of the military, fiscally conservative and against pork, while generally favoring reform and thus being at odds with the good ole boy system that was dominant in group 2.
Romney's narrow niche comes in between them appealing strongest to rich, Reaganist suburbanite boomers, who rather then seeing immigrants as welcomed housed hold servants and field workers, saw them as a threat to their political hegemony. They also viewed Huckabee as being too populist and McCain as too moderate. You see this divide strongly appear in Georgia, Missouri, and Tennessee.
SC, though Romney wasn't a factor here.
The suburbs come down to a battle between McCain and Romney, while the rural areas were between McCain and Huckabee. Huckabee trailed way behind in the suburbs and Romney trailed way behind in the rural areas. Since McCain could compete in both areas, McCain ended up in a stronger position then either Romney or Huckabee and became nominee because of it.
