Newsletter: Essential Politics: Immigration reclaims spotlight in GOP race

Immigration roared back to center stage in the Republican presidential contest this week, producing some of the sharpest exchanges in Tuesday night’s debate, then leading to a running exchange of barbs between Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz about who truly supports amnesty.

All that emphasis on an issue that Republicans blamed for alienating Latino voters in 2012 flies in the face of what GOP leaders said they wanted to do this time around. Few issues better illustrate how little ability the party elite has had this year to control or channel the fervor of grass-roots activists.

"They're doing high-fives in the Clinton campaign now,” the GOP’s one-time frontrunner, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, warned during Tuesday's debate. “Truth,” Clinton’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, tweeted.

Good afternoon, I’m David Lauter, Washington Bureau chief, and this is the Friday edition of Essential Politics, where we review the week’s major developments in the presidential campaign and take a look at stories that delivered insight beyond the daily headlines.

It was Donald Trump, of course, who initially put the spotlight on immigration in the GOP campaign, and he has continued to make that his signature issue. In the debate, when Bush and Ohio Sen. John Kasich challenged him over his plan to deport the estimated 11 million people currently in the country illegally, Trump cited an Eisenhower-era deportation program as an example of how it could be done.

Kate Linthicum took a careful look back at that chapter of history, bringing us a detailed account of what President Eisenhower’s immigration chief dubbed Operation Wetback. It wasn’t smooth. Or easy. Or particularly effective, she reports. But it did cost the lives of scores of people.

The Democratic candidates, meantime, have promised to move in the other direction entirely, saying they would go even further than President Obama in shielding residents in the country illegally from deportation. But the administration’s current effort has had a rough go in the courts so far. After the latest loss -- a ruling by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals -- David Savage and Tim Phelps identified and analyzed the key legal question: How far can the executive branch go in exercising discretion about whom to deport before it effectively has rewritten the immigration law?

One reason that immigration politics are so fraught is the growing size and power of the Latino vote, particularly in a few key swing states. Of those, Nevada is the first up in the primary season, and the Democratic candidates recognize that winning over Latinos is key to victory there. Sen. Bernie Sanders is making a spirited effort to attract more Latino support, Linthicum reported from Las Vegas, but Hillary Rodham Clinton has a very large head start.

Another major issue in the campaign: taxes. As Don Lee shows, the GOP candidates' tax plans provide a good illustration of how far the party has moved. Many of the plans center on ideas that even four years ago would have been dismissed as too radical, including value-added taxes and tax cuts that even the candidates do not pretend would raise as much revenue as the current system.

Overall, the candidates on both sides are responding to an anxious -- and, on the Republican side, quite pessimistic -- voter mood, as shown by our new poll of voter attitudes one year before the election. The poll -- actually two polls at once, one of California, the other nationwide -- showed that even as traditional economic indicators, such the unemployment rate, are doing quite well, voters are anything but happy.

For 12 years now, through two presidencies, voters have said the country is on the wrong track. It's “the longest period of sustained pessimism” in more than a generation, veteran GOP pollster Neil Newhouse said.

Also from our poll, Michael Finnegan looked at how attitudes in California about the economy vary widely by race, ethnicity and geography.

A note on this week's GOP debate: If you missed our coverage, here's a chance to catch up. Cathy Decker analyzed how the debate affected the race. Noah Bierman provided several key takeaways. Seema Mehta and Kurtis Lee looked at Trump on the defensive.  And Finnegan, Lee and Mike Memoli wrapped up all the key developments.

What we’re reading

Technology gives us more and more ways to follow events from a distance, but sometimes, there’s no substitute for actually being there, live. That was the case Thursday night, when Trump went on an epic rant in Iowa. The Washington Post's Jenna Johnson gave a terrific account of the mood at the scene.  

That wraps up this week. On Monday, my colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back with the daily newsletter. Until then, keep track of all the developments in the 2016 campaign with our Trail Guide, at our politics page and on Twitter at @latimespolitics.

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