Republicans may have won big in last month’s midterms but they are facing a difficult challenge in figuring out how to respond to President Obama’s executive orders on immigration. GOP congressional leaders understand they must walk a fine line between the need to avoid another government shutdown disaster and the necessity to fight back against the president’s lawless power grab on immigration. Meanwhile Jeb Bush is urging the congressional caucus to think long term and to pass bills next year when they control both the House and the Senate that will demonstrate their governing vision, including legislation on immigration. There is much to be said for this approach as a general rule, but when it comes to immigration, the former Florida governor may be embracing the right issue for the wrong year.

According to the Washington Post, Bush told a lunch meeting with congressional Republican leaders that they should avoid a standoff with the White House and pass “sensible” bills that would “underscore their commitment to governing and reforming the immigration system with their own policies.”

Bush went further in a forum sponsored by the Wall Street Journal in which he staked out a position that essentially challenges the GOP’s conservative base:

“I don’t know if I would be a good candidate or a bad one, but I kinda know how a Republican could win, whether it’s me or somebody else, and it has to be much more uplifting, much more positive,” Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush suggested that the Republican nominee needs to be willing to “lose the primary to win the general without violating your principles.”

That seems like smart politics and a commendable effort to learn the lessons from Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat at the hands of President Obama. The assumption is that by taking too strong a stand against immigration reform during the primaries in order to win the nomination, Romney handicapped himself in the general election. Given the growing importance of the Hispanic vote, a repeat of that strategy would seem to dictate yet another such defeat in 2016, especially if congressional Republicans spend the next two years fighting Obama on the issue rather than following Bush’s advice.

Yet while Bush is right about the need for his party to articulate what it believes in rather than merely opposing what Obama has done, Republicans should be forgiven for wondering whether, like many a general of the past, perhaps he is fighting the next war with the tactics that would have won the last one. The events of the last year have changed the equation on immigration in many respects, both in terms of policy and politics, and it may be that for once, the conservative base that Bush seems so intent on challenging may have a better feel for what can win the White House than this scion of the party establishment.

As someone who supported the bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill passed by the Senate last year, I agree with Bush that the system needs to be fixed and that sooner or later, the nation will have to confront the problem of what to do about the approximately 11 million illegals already in the country. But the events of this past summer, specifically the surge of illegals, demonstrated that offers of amnesty do have an impact on the ability of the country to control its borders and that opponents of a comprehensive approach were right. Enforcement must come first before anything else.

Even worse, the president’s decision to ditch constitutional norms and to unilaterally impose a temporary amnesty for five million illegals also showed that the arguments of conservatives that this president couldn’t be trusted to enforce the laws were correct. Under the current circumstances, further pieces of legislation on immigration, even those solely focused on securing the border, are essentially irrelevant. The president has not only discarded the rule of law with his executive orders but also showed that the party base that opposed the Senate bill had a firmer grasp of reality than their establishment critics. In doing so, he made it impossible to pass any bill on the issue, whether “sensible” or not, over the course of the next two years. While Bush’s advice was rooted in long-term policy imperatives as well as commonsense approach to governing, it was outdated.

The same could be said for his dare about losing the primary to win the general election.

It is a political truism that a candidate who must veer to far to the political extremes in order to please party constituencies will be crippled in a general election where moderate voters will be turned off by ideological pledges made in the heat of a primary. In 2016, a Republican nominee who is beloved only by a Tea Party base will find victory in November to be out of their reach.

But Republicans who think they must discard Romney’s playbook on immigration may discover that the conventional wisdom about the party needing to appease Hispanic voters by changing their tune on immigration may be hurting their prospects as much as helping them.

Republicans do need to expand their appeal beyond their traditional base and especially among the fastest growing demographic group in the country. But the obsession with the Hispanic vote should not deceive conservatives about their prospects with this sector, which remain poor no matter how much they alter their stance on immigration. Nor should it blind them to the fact that they have a far greater chance to improve their chances of victory in 2016 by concentrating more on white working class voters who are appalled by Obama’s lawlessness and the nation’s inability to control its borders. Indeed, the midterm results, though predicated in part on lower turnout by minorities, demonstrates that Democrats stand to lose as much if not more by over-identification with policies that offend most Americans than they have to gain among Hispanics.

Should Jeb Bush run in 2016 he would be a formidable candidate with the ability to raise all the money he needs and the support of many in the party establishment eager to win back the White House. But if he is planning on running against the party base, the path to a Bush 45 presidency may be rockier than he thinks. Employing the tactics that might have won in 2012 may not only lose primaries that will ensure the nomination for a potential rival but also won’t necessarily win any Republican the general election in 2016.