The Wall Street Journal published a great lead editorial this morning (subscription required) on the GOP House leadership’s losing campaign strategy of using immigration as a “wedge issue.” The strategy obviously failed.

As the Journal’s editorial staff observed:

Republicans on Tuesday managed both to lose their majority in Congress and alienate a fast-growing bloc of Latino swing voters. Other than that, the House GOP strategy of trying to save itself by bucking President Bush and using immigration as a wedge issue worked pretty well.

Republicans can’t say they weren’t warned. Like trade protectionism, the immigration issue is the fool’s gold of American politics. Voters like to sound off to pollsters about immigrants, yet they pull the lever with other matters foremost in mind. Elections seldom if ever turn on immigration, and the GOP restrictionist message so adored by talk radio, cable news and the nativist blogosphere once again failed to deliver the goods.

Such GOP anti-immigration crusaders as J.D. Hayworth of Arizona and John Hostettler of Indiana were tossed out of office by wide margins. Exit polls suggest that Republicans suffered a sizeable drop in support from Hispanic voters turned off by the harsh Republican rhetoric aimed at Hispanic immigrants.  

Of course, I call it a great editorial because it and this week’s election returns confirm my own warnings to Republicans about the dangers of running as the anti-immigration party (here and here).

Although the election results were not good news on free trade and other issues, the new Congress will probably be more open to the kind of real immigration reform the Cato Institute has been advocating.