And what did they get? First, President Bush sent National Guard troops to the border, but ordered them not to do any guarding or interacting with immigrants. In fact, many of the troops aren't even armed and have to rely on the Border Patrol for protection should they run into drug and immigrant smugglers. Then, Congress authorized the building of a border fence but only enough of it to cover about a third of the 2,000-mile frontier. Only a fraction of what the wall is supposed to cost was actually funded.
No wonder the restrictionists were disillusioned. A CNN exit poll found that among voters who listed illegal immigration as their No. 1 issue, 51 percent thought Republicans would do a better job controlling it while 46 percent said Democrats would. That's not much of a gap, given the lengths to which Republicans went to claim this issue as their own -- and at no small cost.
After decades of Latino outreach efforts by Republicans, which culminated in President Bush walking off with 44 percent of the Latino vote in the 2004 election, congressional hard-liners did a good job of blowing up every bridge. Polls taken before the election showed that while immigration didn't start out a top concern for many Latino voters, the issue was likely to influence the choices Latinos made in the voting booths. Tired of being pushed around by opportunistic politicians, many Latinos seemed intent on seizing the opportunity to push back.
They did just that. In fact, Latinos delivered what President Bush might call a "thumpin." According to exit polls cited by The Wall Street Journal, more than 70 percent of Hispanics voted Democratic in contests for House seats. Just 27 percent voted Republican -- an 11-percentage-point drop from the level of support Latinos gave Republican candidates in the 2002 midterms.
That means that Latinos are an important part of the coalition that helped put Democrats back in power, and that should give them some capital. Now all they need to do is cash it for the sake of achieving what a majority of Americans seem to be saying they want -- comprehensive immigration reform and leaders who know the difference between polemics and progress.