Immigration was the issue that many on the Right-- especially panderers like Romney -- thought would define the 2008 elections. And it was the issue that was supposed to help doom McCain among GOP voters. Instead, it was the issue that in the end probably killed Romney's last hope of getting the nomination. And the GOP will likely nominate one of the key authors of the supposedly hated comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

There is some justice that it was GOP Hispanics who delivered the death blow to Romney. McCain led Romney is a number of demographic groups, but it was Hispanics -- more than veterans or elderly voters -- who gave McCain a disproportionate number of their votes. McCain received 54% of Hispanic voters to the 14% of Hispanics who supported Romney. With Hispanics making up 12% of the GOP primary voters and that difference, doing the math, adds up almost exactly to the overall 5% McCain margin of victory in Florida.

People will say that Florida is unique in the preponderance of Hispanics in GOP primaries because of the Cuban vote, but that's a reality of ethnic politcs historically. There are always "unqiue" states that if you politically shit on some group, they make you pay. And unless the GOP commits complete collective political suicide -- which the McCain victory indicates is not to the taste of the actual GOP voters -- the share of Hispanic Republican voters will only increase as the overall Hiispanic population expands.

And in general elections, that vote by Latinos is only expanding more, which means that any anti-immigrant politics is doomed. As we've bighlighted at Progressive States Network:

Citizenship applications doubled in 2007 in areas where [the citizenship] campaign was launched and have increased 65% across the country (and over 110% in Los Angeles!). Latinos made up only 6% of the electorate back in 2004, but with massive voter registration and citizenship drives, the rightwing seems to have awakened a sleeping giant that will soon have political clout more in line with its 14.3% of the population.

The centrist New Democratic Network (NDN) has highlighted data that the Hispanic electorate is projected to expand from 7.5 million voters in 2000 to 14 million in 2008. NDN argues that "The Republican handling of immigration has been one of the biggest strategic mistakes by a modern Party in recent American history." But they are not alone in that assessment. America's Majority, a conservative strategy center, has highlighted the political losses by politicians taking hard-line anti-immigrant stances in 2006, arguing "Any policy that induces mass fear in illegal aliens will induce mass anger in legal aliens." They argue that rightwing politics could cost the GOP 3.5 to 4.7 million Latino votes in 2008.

I was in California during the early 1990s when the anti-immigrant Prop 187 was passed. Politicians then thought it was smart politics, but the GOP leadership that led that fight was wiped off the map in following years and now has ZERO political relevance in daily life in that state. It was political suicide and any Republican or Democratic politicians who think such anti-immigrant politics will help them get elected will probably be wrong this election year, but even for the handful of folks who get some short-term political gain, they will have no long-term political future.

Conversely, those politicians who stand up for humane policies and comprehensive solutions to the immigration issue will be the ones leading the country in coming years. Those who duck or take cowardly stands now should expect to run into the long memories of the expanding numbers of voters from immigrant communities who will punish them in the future, just as Romney was punished in Florida yesterday.

Florida is merely a promise of the future political reality across the country.