“We are really balanced here on a little precipice and if this, pardon the pun, goes south, we could be in very serious trouble,” said Republican media strategist Paul Wilson, citing the increasingly intense attacks on the immigration bill coming from the right. “If [the legislation] stalls or is killed off by conservatives, we could take the Hispanic community and turn them into the African-American community, where we get four percent on a good day… We could be a lost party for generations.”…

And as the battle on Capitol Hill wore on, the mood among reform advocates grew grim. Grover Norquist, a conservative leader and longtime immigration advocate, recalled attending strategy meetings with Barry Jackson, then a senior Bush advisor, where attendees tried to keep spirits up by means of delusion.

“It was like Hitler’s bunker, where you know you’re losing but you’re still like, ‘Here’s our counterattack!'” Norquist told BuzzFeed. “We tried to pretend like we could still win but we knew it wasn’t going to happen.”

The impending defeat was all the more frustrating for Norquist and his Republican allies because they could see how the battle was hurting their party’s image among Latinos. Norquist blamed Democrats for deliberately sinking the immigration effort in 2007, and said the GOP got unfairly saddled with the blame — but he allowed that conservatives in his party didn’t help their case.