Not long ago, immigration was supposed to be the key issue of the Republican presidential primary, where even though the differences between the candidates are small, they all have to show voters that they're better on the issue than their opponents. And "better" isn't about having a superior policy solution, it's about reflecting the voters' feelings back to them in the most compelling way.
But then there was a terrorist attack in California, and everything changed. Immigration is no longer so important on the campaign trail; instead, the discussion is all about who's tougher on terrorism. But while it looks like Republicans are talking about something completely different, the truth is that it's the same discussion and the same emotions, just with a different group of foreigners as the main target.
The Republican primary is really about one thing - a complex, multifaceted thing, but one thing all the same. It finds its expression in any number of issues, but it always comes down to a feeling that Republican voters have. It ranges between unease and anger, but it's always about the sense that things just aren't right. Sure, they hate Barack Obama, but he's more symptom than cause.
Think about that prototypical Republican voter, a middle-aged white guy with old-fashioned values. He sees immigrants moving into his area, speaking a language he doesn't understand. He sees foreign terrorists on the news. He sees his country growing less religious, he sees gay people getting married and transgender people celebrated for their courage, he sees popular culture created by a bunch of damn hippies infecting the minds of his children. The world gets more confusing all the time, and he doesn't like the direction things are going.
A Wall Street Journal poll in late October found 71 percent of Republican primary voters agreeing that "A lot of what is happening today makes me feel uneasy and out of place in my own country" (45 percent agreed strongly). And when Donald Trump says he wants "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on," it sounds pretty darn sensible to our voter, whether he's supporting Trump or not. Because somebody's got to figure out what the hell is going on, and not just with the Muslims.
The political news of the week is the rise of Ted Cruz, who now leads in Iowa and has moved into second place nationally. There's no telling yet how long it will last, especially since candidates popular with evangelical voters who do well in Iowa haven't gotten their party's nomination lately. But Cruz's rise is also a story about what isn't happening, namely the success so many people have predicted for Marco Rubio. And one reason may be that Rubio's youthful optimism isn't connecting with that jumble of negative emotions, the fear and the anger and the unease, that Republicans are feeling right now.
A big part of conservatives' dissatisfaction comes from their perception that the national Republican Party has been letting the country slip away. Their representatives have won political victories, but they didn't do anything with control of Congress. They haven't fought Obama hard enough, and they've either been defeated or compromised on everything that's important. Our long downward slide has continued unabated. So the fact that Cruz is universally detested in Washington is a strong point in his favor. Ask him what he's accomplished and he'll tell you about how often he has "stood up" against both the White House and his own party's leadership. That may not sound like an accomplishment to many people, but to lots of primary voters, it is.
Rubio can say he's fought against the Washington establishment, too, but he's going to have a hard time convincing too many primary voters, particularly when they're contrasting him with Cruz. And imagine that we go a couple of months without another terrorist attack. The issue will fade in importance, as all issues can, and it's entirely possible, maybe even likely, that immigration would once again become the main vehicle through which voters' feelings of unease are expressed. Should that happen, Cruz will attack Rubio mercilessly for trying to achieve comprehensive immigration reform early in his Senate term; it was Rubio's temporary support of that effort that alienated him from many Tea Partiers.
Perhaps I'm wrong about this, and Rubio's message that he represents a new generation of optimistic leadership will resonate with primary voters (although Cruz is only five months older than Rubio, he doesn't talk about his youth in the same way as the baby-faced Floridian). But at the moment, while Rubio can rail at President Obama with the best of them, he isn't channeling that sense of unease in the same way that Cruz and Donald Trump are.
The party out of power always feels like things aren't right-after all, it's infuriating to have to watch a president you despise on television every day, setting policy and making decisions you disagree with. But most of the time, that's a problem that can be solved with the right electoral outcome. What worries many Republican voters right now, on the other hand, is something much bigger. They want someone who understands what they're feeling-who gets the fear, the dismay, the unease, and even the anger. Even if none of the candidates are actually going to be able to do much about it.
