Could Rush be right? Schaller explains...

Tom Schaller has a great piece in Salon today on the immigration issue. From the lede:

On his radio talk show last Friday, dittohead in chief Rush Limbaugh was working himself into quite a lather. The subject? Immigration reform, specifically the controversial immigration bill now before the Senate -- or, as Limbaugh dubbed it, the Comprehensive Destroy the Republican Party Act. Though Limbaugh pummeled his usual targets on the left, complaining that the current immigration reform proposal was yet another Ted Kennedy-led scheme to destroy America, Limbaugh was also unsparing toward national Republicans:

At the end of the day here, what we're talking about is the marginalization, if not the destruction, of the Republican Party. Look, it's time to be blunt here. I said I'm going to stop carrying the water last November, and I'm not carrying the water. The current crop of Republican leaders has not only lost the Congress, the current crop of Republican leaders is on the way to destroying the base by signing on to this kind of legislation.

Simon gets to the heart of the issue in the piece, saying:

"The Republican strategy on immigration has been one of the great failures of modern politics," says Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network, which has organized a systematic outreach campaign to Hispanic voters. "What's going on in the Republican Party is a debate between the strategists who want to win and a part of their base that is extremely xenophobic."