The new omnibus bill’s provision to expand low-skill, nonagricultural guest worker visas is political insanity. The Republican establishment is already facing a revolt from Republican-leaning wage-earners from across the party’s ideological spectrum.

The good news is that the ideological diversity of the rebels (tea partiers and working-class white moderates) makes it hard for them to agree on one candidate. Populist limited government conservatives know Donald Trump isn’t one of them, and Ted Cruz is a bad fit for white working-class moderates who feel like they need the backstop of a strong safety net.

But then the establishment goes and pull something like this. I don’t agree with everything in this Ace of Spades post (even making allowance for hyperbole) and the language is NSFW, but the GOP establishment has earned all the contempt that Ace can shoot in their direction.

It isn’t the greed that gets me. I understand greed. It is that the GOP establishment is so clumsy and trigger-happy. They could have waited fourteen months and guest workered and amnestied to their hearts’ content in the early months of the Rubio administration. There might even have been enough goodwill with the election of a new, young, Republican president that their coalition might have stayed together.

But they couldn’t wait. The wise men and wonder boys who are supposed to be the epitome of responsible government seriousness just poured gasoline on a populist conflagration. And for what? A couple of hundred thousand guest worker visas? They just threw a hand grenade at the Rubio campaign. They made it more likely that Cruz will consolidate the ever-more-bitter conservative anti-establishment vote, and more likely that Cruz will be able to make some inroads with working-class white moderates if Trump falters. Even if Rubio wins the nomination, the establishment has further divided and demoralized their own coalition.

Cruz understands that Republicans need the votes of the people who are currently supporting Trump. They need more than those voters of course, but they need the Trump voters too – and therein lies the trick. The Republican establishment seems to assume that these voters can be ignored (or even insulted) and they will still show up and vote Republican. If they were a genuine party establishment, they would be looking to find the common ground between the party’s factions. Even if they were simply competent sociopaths, they would have avoided this week’s guest worker stunt.

I was listening to the local conservative talk radio show today, and the feeling against Rubio was much more fierce than that directed against Romney at a similar stage in the 2012 cycle. My feeling is that there are millions of conservatives who would rather not vote than vote for Rubio. I also have the feeling that many Republican donors, lobbyists and former office holders would rather see Clinton win the general election than face the insult of Cruz presidency.

This is bad news.