Many analysts blamed Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss on his rightward tack on immigration during the primaries, when he urged “self-deportation.” That was a major conclusion of the Republican National Committee’s postmortem report after Romney’s loss. “In 2012 we were talking about electrified fences and self-deportation; in 2016 we’re talking about birthright citizenship and forced, mass deportation,” Peter Wehner, a former aide to George W. Bush, told me. “That’s not a step in the right direction, and we’re doing that because of Trump.”

Party elites can already envision the attack ads of sad-eyed children being torn from their parents. The harsh immigration rhetoric doesn’t only offend Latino voters, they say—it hurts the party with other minority groups, with moderates and independents, with young voters and with women. And as other candidates have been pushed to take sides on Trump’s plans, they, too, have wandered into problematic territory. Several have said they agree with parts of his immigration agenda.

Even Graham, a longtime proponent of immigration reform, has said he would consider ending birthright citizenship, though he told me any changes would be aimed at the small group of “birth tourists” and would not apply to current citizens. But Graham said Trump’s immigration proposals were “offensive.” “If he is the voice and face of the Republican party, I think our allies are shaking their heads and our enemies are licking their chops,” he said.

Graham has not hesitated to call out Trump; another lagging candidate, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, has also criticized him. Many of the others have scolded him for one offensive comment or another—whether it’s the one about Mexicans, or the one about John McCain, or the one about Megyn Kelly. In general, however, the other candidates seem afraid of provoking Trump, whether because they don’t want to lose his supporters or because they fear the mogul’s talent for devastating insults. (Graham’s tangle with Trump led the famously luddite senator to replace his old flip phone with an iPhone, which he refers to as “the most positive thing to come out of this campaign so far.”)

Last week, Jeb Bush signaled a major shift in strategy when he went on the offensive against Trump, criticizing him as insufficiently conservative; Bush’s allied super PAC flew a plane over Trump’s Alabama rally on Friday trailing a banner reading “TRUMP 4 HIGHER TAXES, JEB 4 PREZ.” Some Bush allies cheered his courage in taking on Trump, while others worry Bush may damage or diminish himself in the process. Bush’s offensive represents the first sustained effort to run a conventional political campaign against Trump; the GOP establishment is watching closely to see if such tactics can succeed, or whether Trump will again prove immune to the normal rules of politics.