Regarding the open borders nonsense, what you had was the Republican party's "leadership elite", which included the President, the House and Senate leadership, Republican governors, the National Chamber of Commerce, and countryclubbers everywhere deciding they could "pick off" the Hispanic vote forever by legalizing all the Hispanic illegals.
Every single one of them went along with the idea, and only a handful of elected Republicans opposed it.
It took the base of the party to rise up against this nonsense and derail it.
I don't think you can target any particular individual (other than Karl Rove) in this debacle; nor do I see that any of the folks still running all that clean. They either supported the idea, or they stood aside, or they didn't speak out early enough in opposition.
All are guilty; all are unclean!
“Fairness Doctrine? Hardly ~ that’s a Dem thing.”
And you don’t think McCain/Huckabee would be against McCain/Feingold and the Fairness Doctrine? When any legislation like that would come to his desk, McCain would not be able to find his veto pen!