No one could have predicted

Apparently conservatives are just now realizing that treating the entirety of the nation's largest growing minority group as subhuman criminals is a bad move electorally. They are also discovering that their candidate cannot overcome the mountain of ill-will that the GOP has stoked simply because he's been less bigoted than the rest of the party.

Of course these are the same people who wonder why they can't crack 10% of the African-American vote and then trip all over themselves to declare Jesse Helms as a revered ideological leader of the party.

So it's pretty clear that they lack the ability to see the very obvious consequences of their actions.