From the Great State of Florida (boldface mine):

Florida Republicans passed a bill criminalizing the transport of undocumented people into Florida, requiring hospitals to ask about immigration status on intake forms, invalidating out of state driver’s licenses or other forms of government ID issued to undocumented people, and preventing local governments from issuing identification cards to undocumented people.

Now, after sparking backlash among thousands of immigrants (who make up a great deal of Florida’s economy), some Florida Republicans are trying to backpedal and do damage control…

“This bill is 100 percent supposed to scare you,” said Roth. “I’m a farmer, and the farmers are mad as hell. We are losing employees. They’re already starting to move to Georgia and other states. It’s urgent that you talk to all your people and convince them that you have resources, state representatives, and other people that can explain the bill to you,” he added, essentially begging Florida’s labor force to not leave the state that cares little for them.

“This is more of a political bill than it is policy. It does give more police state powers going forward to deal with immigration, but still this is mainly a political bill,” Roth concluded incoherently. It’s just politics and messaging, but also it ramps up the police state, but also it’s just all politics. OK…

“I really didn’t prepare anything,” Garcia said while beginning her remarks, adding that she agreed with everything Roth said. “This is a bill basically to scare people from coming to the state of Florida, and I think it’s done its purpose.”

The pleading by Republicans who are reaping what they sowed comes after Latin American truck drivers began rallying behind calls to strike and not enter Florida, while thousands of workers and families have marched across the state protesting the bill and threatening to leave the state.

While The Discourse™ spends a lot of time discussing why White evangelicals overwhelmingly vote Republican (80+%), it spends very little time discussing why Democratic-aligned groups are strongly pro-Democrat (or even more so). Black women don’t vote Democratic in the low to mid ninety percent range, or Jews at around 80% because they’re thinking about things like marginal tax rates. They vote like this because they view Republicans as an existential threat.

With damn good reason. If you play footsie long enough with various bigots, endorse various kinds of bigotry (either openly or on the quasi-downlow), and rhetorically demonize certain groups (along with failing to denounce those political allies who do), people will start to take all of that seriously. You can’t just shrug it off as ‘politics’ or ‘political games’ because what if you’re wrong? It’s not a game when basic freedoms or even your very existence is on the line.

Republicans are definitely “reaping what they sowed.” Hopefully, it’s not too late.