The relentlessly harsh Republican campaign against immigrants has always hidden a streak of racialist extremism. Now after several high-water years, the Republican tide has gone out, leaving exposed the nativism of fringe right-wingers clinging to what they hope will be an issue that will draw support.

In January at the National Press Club in Washington, a group seeking to speak for the future of the Republican Party declared that its November defeats in Congressional races stemmed not from having been too hard on foreigners, but too soft.

The group, the American Cause, released a report arguing that anti-immigration absolutism was still the solution for the party’s deep electoral woes, actual voting results notwithstanding. Rather than “pander to pro-amnesty Hispanics and swing voters,”as President Bush and Karl Rove once tried to do, the report’s author, Marcus Epstein, urged Republicans to gamble on their efforts to run on schemes to seal the border and drive immigrants out.

This is nonsense, of course. For years Americans have rejected the cruelty of enforcement-only regimes and Latinobashing, in opinion surveys and at the polls. In House and Senate races in 2008 and 2006,“anti-amnesty”hard-liners consistently lost to candidates who proposed comprehensive reform solutions.

Americans want immigration solved, and they realize that mass deportations will not do that. When you add the unprecedented engagement of growing numbers of Latino voters in 2008, it becomes clear that the nativist path is the path to permanent political irrelevance.

Perhaps more notable than the report itself was the team that delivered it. It included Bay Buchanan, sister of Pat, who founded the American Cause and wrote“State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.”She was joined by James Pinkerton, an essayist and a contributor to the conservative Fox News network, who, as an aide to the first President Bush, took credit for the racist Willie Horton ads run against Bush’s opponent in the 1988 presidential race, Michael Dukakis.

Even more telling was the presence of Peter Brimelow, a founder of Vdare.com, an extremist anti-immigration Web site. It is named for Virginia Dare, the first white baby born in the English North American colonies, which tells you most of what you need to know. The site includes opinions like this from Mr.Epstein:

“Diversity can be good in moderation - if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers - as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.”

It is easy to mock white-supremacist views as pathetic and to assume that nativism in the age of Obama is on the way out. But racism has a nasty habit of never going away, no matter how much we may want it to, and thus the perpetual need for vigilance.