There’s a Simpsons episode where Lisa conducts an experiment by connecting a cupcake to electrodes. Bart, of course, keeps grabbing it and getting shocked, over and over again, not learning from his mistakes. Someone’s conducting the same experiment on the Republican establishment, and it’s failing just as badly, if a story on immigration in today’s L.A. Times is any indication. Ed Gillespie is trying to organize a business coalition to fund a major election-style campaign this fall to push the president’s guestworker/amnesty ideas, based on the efforts to push Social Security reform and the Medicare prescription drug program (these are apparently considered successes in the White House). Besides the usual urban myths about Pete Wilson in 1994 or the Hispanic vote in last November’s election, there’s this gem from Dick Armey, co-chairman of the new coalition: “To me, the Tancredo wing appeals to the more prurient character of our nature. We want to talk to the better angels of our nature.”