Yesterday's New York Times reports on Brian Bilbray's victory in the California special election for the state's 50th Congressional District.

From a national perspective, the outcome suggests the extent to which immigration could be a critical issue in some contests — in a way that could pose complications for Mr. Bush. Mr. Bilbray directly criticized the immigration program backed by Mr. Bush and the Senate because it includes measures that would allow some illegal immigrants to gain amnesty.

He told CNN early this morning that his campaign turned around in this district near the Mexican border, after he specifically distanced himself from that immigration plan, instead calling for a tough enforcement measures that included building a fence on the California-Mexican border.

"A president proposing amnesty was absolutely a big problem," he said. "It was not until I was able to highlight the fact that I did not agree with my friends in the Senate or my friend in the White House on amnesty that you really began to see polls changing."

At the same time, Ms. Busby was hurt, aides to both parties said, when she was recorded on tape making remarks that made it appear as if she was encouraging illegal immigrants to vote for her illicitly. Ms. Busby denied that was what she meant, but those remarks in the final days of the campaign permitted Republicans to push the immigration issue even harder, at a time she was trying to turn the campaign on the issue of corruption.

Bilbray's victory is important because it shows that, even without the support of party bigwigs, the enforcement-only message is a winning one. It now remains to be shown that this political logic cuts both ways -- that taking the wrong stance on immigration can just as easily torpedo a campaign.

Several races promise precisely that. In Utah, Tennessee and possibly Indiana (I'll keep my fingers crossed), Republican incumbents may face an uphill battle over their support for the Bush-McCain-Kennedy guestworker amnesty. Incumbent defeat in any of these races will likely lead to an abandoment of the Party's recent immigration-enthusiast stance. After all, nothing hurts like failure.

In the meantime, the tide will continue to turn in our favor. Whatever Congress decides to do with the legislation recently forwarded it by the Senate, voter anger over immigration is not going away any time soon. True, an important part of the political elite continues to collude in ignoring the issue, something nicely illustrated by a recent US News and World Report article on the various ways in which the immigration issue is playing out in local elections. But what the article shows above all else is the sheer resistance of the powers that be to changing political circumstnaces. As Peter Brimelow notes in an important recent summary of America's immigration predicament:

On the immigration issue, the American elite has reacted with a bipartisan intransigence exceptional in democratic politics. The astonishing spectacle of a seriously unpopular President expending the last of his political capital to impose a policy that alienates his own base and dooms his party to ever-worsening minority status is merely the latest example of this phenomenon. There are several reasons for this bizarre behavior, but the consequence is the same: no evasive action in the face of the gathering storm.

If recent controversy has done anything, it has been to ensure that the great immigration debate finally breaks into the open. And it has, it is there, it is not going away. Republican incumbents have good reason to worry. But, eventually, even Democrats will need to think twice.