Bret Stephen tries to interject some reason and facts into the campaign but this seems about as welcome as wisdom and experience.

Those of us who thought that such ignorance and prejudice were minor if loud elements of the Republicans have been corrected by Trump and his supporters. Is it too late for the party to correct this tragedy? Will a third party relegate the GOP to the dustbin with the Whigs?

from Bret Stephens at the WSJ, The GOP’s Mexico Derangement (excerpt)

The most serious terrorist attempt to enter the U.S. across a land border occurred in December 1999, when Ahmed Ressam tried to smuggle a bomb into the U.S. from. . . Canada. All 19 of the 9/11 hijackers entered the U.S. with legal visas on scheduled flights. The bride of the San Bernardino attacker came here the same way. No significant act of political violence against the U.S. has been staged from Mexico since Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, N.M., in March 1916.

As for ordinary criminals, my colleague Jason Riley has noted that the rate of incarceration in California for foreign-born residents is less than half of the U.S.-born rate. Violent crime in the U.S. fell dramatically during the same two decades, 1990-2010, of an “invasion” of illegal immigrants.

This is a foul electoral season, one conservative voters (or their children) will look back on with political regret and personal remorse. Mr. Trump’s “Mexican” slur about federal judge Gonzalo Curiel is the most shameful word uttered by a major presidential candidate since Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond thundered in 1948 against the “Nigra race.” As in 1948, Mr. Trump is appealing to constituents who have stuffed themselves on a diet of bad statistics and misleading anecdotes—people who fancy themselves victims but behave like bigots. Republican leaders who think they can co-opt or tame Mr. Trump will instead find themselves stained by him.

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