"anti-immigration conservatives"
The phrase says it all. Anti-immigration will never fly. Anti- ILLEGAL immigration is an easy winner....and easy to paint your Democratic opponent into a corner as refusing to obey the law and abet lawbreakers. However anti-immigration makes the Republican/conservative out as a bigot/racist.....and the media fostered this image...and won. Politics is all sound bites.
There are plenty on FR who buy the Left/media spin that conservatives are "anti-immigration"... hook, line and sinker. We're supposed to know better on FR.
That is not the whole truth and is thus not the truth.
The NRCC TV ads said immigrant/immigration without the adjective illegal. Here on FR and many other internet sites, both R and not R, many antis repeatedly refer to immigration/immigrants and Mexicans and Fox and other things without connecting it to illegeal.
Hannity will say immigration 100 times in 3 hours and only once use the adjective illegal. The antis are the communication problem here. They are incompetent at PR.