Neal Boortz, a retired radio talk show host who refers to himself on his Web site as “Mighty Whitey” and who was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2009 by, of all people, Rush Limbaugh, took to Twitter Friday shortly after McCain’s Fox appearance, declaring, “Founders never intended that all people vote…and certainly not people who brazenly broke our laws to get here.”

This one statement outlines the whole of the problem with conservative opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. It harkens to ideas of nativism, racism, misogyny, elitism and inequality from which the country is moving forward, but for which some conservatives still yearn…

After years of hostility — both rhetorical and legislative — toward Hispanics that has pushed them away from the Republicans and into the arms of the Democrats, many hard-line conservatives are now playing the only card they have left: opposition to so-called amnesty, at all costs.

It’s a bluster surge, and it won’t easily be undone or forgotten, whether this Senate bill lives or dies.