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What caused the GOP to back off the immigration issue was sheer vote calculation--the paleos had already left the party, not over immigration but over Israel and foreign trade. The paleos also took the side of the Demoncrats in the budget battle of 1995, since they wanted to bring the GOP down by any means necessary.

How many people are we talking about? A few thousand at most? It may have been vote calculation that influenced the GOP to back off on immigration, but it can't have been the loss of paleoconservatives or those who might have left over Israel and foreign trade. Those groups were just too small. Nor is it clear that they had much effect on the budget in 1995.

If you are talking about Rockwellites and Flemingites, their numbers are negligible. You might as well talk about Randians or the Natural Law Party. To say that they "won Clinton a second term" is absurd.

Large numbers of people who cared about immigration reform never left the Republican party. The feew who did would have been won back by a party committed to reforming abuses in immigration. They certainly wouldn't have remained away because of foreign policy questions if the party were willing to take other steps in their direction. I suspect campaign contributions and think tanks were more important in turning the GOP away from immigration reform.

I agree that the paleocons don't number that many--but they do have influence outside their own clique. For one thing, up until 9/11 palecons made up a good proportion of local radio talk show hosts (as opposed to national hosts like Rush Limbaugh), so their caterwauling caused many would-be GOP voters to stay home. I have had first-hand experience with this. Here in Nevada in the 1998 election, Harry Reid was running for reelection against John Ensign, and the contest was too close to call. Our local paleo radio show host got on a tirade against the "cowardly" Republicans just a few weeks before the election, and a deluge of callers phoned in to agree with him. Ensign lost by about 200 votes. The fact is that there are all too many Republicans, paleo or otherwise, who are all too willing to seize on any argument that "we're all doomed, so it's no use even trying."