For some reason, I've only just seen this brilliant post by Richard Viguerie on what we at VDARE.com call Conservatism Inc.—which I increasingly think is the main barrier to getting patriotic immigration reform into politics: DC Consultants Stealing the Soul of the GOP (7/9/12):

To most of these highly paid political “strategists,” the campaigns of Ronald Reagan are a grade school memory. Growing-up in the rarified atmosphere of Capitol Hill, where most of them got their start in politics, they know only one way of winning: raise a lot of money from special interests and buy a lot of negative ads on TV... and earn themselves millions in ad placement commissions in the process.

And most importantly, don’t run as a conservative or take any socially conservative positions that might be at odds with those of the urban elites who dominate the mainstream media.

We're interested in how this impacts the immigration issue, of course, but Viguerie notes that it's also a problem for small-government advocates:

Ever wonder why the outcry against Washington’s crony capitalism that is heard every day on Main Street rarely finds its way into Republican political campaigns?

Simple – the same consultants who run Republican political campaigns also advise and run ad campaigns for the special interests who feed off the largess of the federal budget.

It's fascinating to see Viguerie, one of the key forces in the Reagan rebellion, moving into opposition again in his 79th year.

My own view is that of another key Reagan soldier, the late Lynn Nofziger: this is all going to end in a Third Party.