Previously he claimed that deporting illegal aliens, when Hispanics were voting for Democrats by a 70-30 split, was just fascism. His principles demanded he denounce this monstrous Nazi-like demand for a racially-pure country.
Now that Hispanics are more or less divided between Republicans and this True Conservative (TM)'s precious Democrat Party, while rich, privileged white liberals like himself vote 65-35 Democrat, he's decided the new True Conservative (TM) position is to deport these subversive vermin.
David Strom:
Jonathan Last is the Editor of The Bulwark, a NeverTrump magazine whose sales pitch is that it represents pre-Trump conservatism.
Many of us have been skeptical that NeverTrumpers as a group are actually still conservatives at all if they ever were. Some clearly were, some remain a version of conservative, and many are now unapologetic Democrats who toe the party line no matter what.
I think we can safely say that Last fits into that category.
This, I think, reminds us that, for many, politics has less to do with ideology or policy preferences than cultural affinity groups, and over the past decade and a half, the parties have exchanged coalitions, with the Democrats becoming the party of the overly educated and the Republicans the party of the working class.
The Democrat coalition has always been more transactionally based than the Republicans, and Last's argument is that Democrats should abandon the fight for open borders because the voters the party gets from its support of them are no longer in their pocket.
I have two observations about this: the first is important for understanding how Democrats conduct and see elections, and the second and perhaps more significant for understanding the current Democratic Party's long-term problems and the nature of their coalition.
The first and most obvious fact is that Last basically admits that the push for open borders was entirely about elections. His argument is that, since Hispanics and even illegal immigrants are no longer a voting bloc, the party should abandon them. This admission should be damning, but Last doesn't even seem to understand that admitting that Democrats have counted on illegal votes to win elections is a bad thing.
I don't think this admission is that significant, though, because, at some level, we all knew that. It is the most obvious explanation for why Democrats have been so dedicated to open borders--they see it as electorally advantageous, so they are willing to sacrifice Americans' well-being for electoral success.
Strom has more.
I'd point out that Last is also revealing that his constant claims that his policy positions are based on "principles" is and always has been the lie of a femmy narcissist with a sociopath's desire to control people through shameless lies and manipulation.
This describes almost the entirety of the NeverTrump dead-enders: feminine men (and some masculine women) who have always been wormy cowards who advanced themselves through lies, smears, and manipulations who collectively had a nervous breakdown and went genuinely mad when they learned that their sociopath's checklist of skills and aptitudes was being rejected and they could not control the people they had long abused.