Earlier this week, Daily Beast contributor Stuart Stevens argued that Rubio’s work on immigration reform “offers almost no foreseeable political gains with his party’s base.” But the Republican base isn’t Rubio’s problem. Yes, Rubio’s immigration push will hurt him among his party’s most hard-core ideologues. But the candidates they support rarely win. Of the last five Republican presidential nominees—Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush—none were the most conservative major candidates in the GOP primary. But each won because they were conservative enough and because the party establishment rallied behind them. As Ramesh Ponnuru has pointed out, “the Republican establishment always wins presidential-nomination contests, and conservative insurgents almost never do.”…

For Rubio, the key to winning the GOP nomination is becoming the undisputed candidate of the GOP establishment. And in that effort, his leadership on immigration helps, both because GOP elites think immigration reform is good for business, and because they think it’s crucial to Republican survival. Already, a group of party heavyweights—led by Haley Barbour and Dan Senor, and bankrolled by Mark Zuckerberg—is running ads in red states urging voters to “stand with Marco Rubio to end de-facto amnesty.”

And if Rubio’s championing of immigration reform doesn’t hurt him in the primaries, it will clearly help him in the general election. Yes, the GOP’s Latino problem goes far beyond immigration: as much as conservatives hate to admit it, Latinos are pretty fond of government. Still, if Rubio can claim credit for comprehensive immigration reform—something Latino activists have been demanding for years—it will help him not only among Latinos, but among young and female voters who think the GOP is rigid and mean. With those voters, the fact that Rubio took abuse from his own side will be a plus.