WHERE DO THESE SHOOTERS AND BOMBERS GET THE IDEA IMMIGRATION IS A THREAT?:

The commercial opens with an appeal to fear: a hoodie-wearing man prowling an alley, knife in hand. His face remains hidden but the ad makes it clear: He's an illegal immigrant.

"We need tough immigration enforcement to keep dangerous criminals out," says the ad by a national conservative political group, part of an effort to help a Republican challenger, Mike Braun, oust a Democratic incumbent in Indiana and capture a U.S. Senate seat in November's congressional elections.

As they try to hang on to control of Congress, Republican candidates are following the lead of President Donald Trump and turning to rhetoric about immigrants as a tactic to motivate voters. The scope of that strategy emerges in a nationwide Reuters examination of ad buys, candidates' social media posts and polling, as well as dozens of interviews with candidates, voters and campaign strategists.

The trend is especially visible on Twitter. Congressional Republicans seeking re-election have dramatically increased the number of tweets they post about immigration since Trump's election, a Reuters/Ipsos analysis of social media shows. Immigration messaging has surged across the spectrum of Republican-held districts - highly competitive swing seats and reliably Republican ones, in places with immigrant populations both large and small.

'Once is an accident,' wrote Ian Fleming in Goldfinger, 'Twice is a coincidence. Three times is an enemy action.'

That Cesar Sayoc, the Chippendale with a bomb in his pocket, mailed his pipe bombs to leading Democrats is no accident. That Robert Bowers, his paranoia  fanned by online incitement, decided to massacre Jews at Philadelphia's Tree of Life synagogue is not a coincidence. And who would be surprised if tomorrow there was a third action from these enemies of liberal democracy?

The violent actions of Sayoc and Bowers emerge from the long, digitally-enhanced continuum of the right. No president has been more reckless in his public speech than Donald Trump. And most Republicans have followed Trump in being very careless about how they speak, and the company they keep when it comes to winning elections. The paranoid style precedes the paranoid act.

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