Story highlights Issac Bailey: John Boehner's decision to kill bipartisan immigration reform legislation may prove fateful in election

He says if Latinos help Hillary Clinton win, Republicans will have themselves to blame

Issac Bailey has been a journalist in South Carolina for two decades and was most recently the primary columnist for The Sun News in Myrtle Beach. He was a 2014 Harvard University Nieman fellow. Follow him on Twitter: @ijbailey. The views expressed are his own.

(CNN) Before the final votes are counted in races that will determine the presidency and control of the US Senate, let us reflect on the single decision by the former Speaker of the House John Boehner that more than any other may have shaped the contours of this election.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is said to be a smart man, but he wasn't smart enough to see that by standing behind the GOP presidential nominee, a man Ryan says he's already voted for, he was doubling down on a colossal mistake made by his predecessor.

This mistake is among the reasons Hispanics may provide the decisive bloc of votes (the Hispanic vote is up by more than 100% in early voting in some states) that will put a Democrat back in the White House and hasten the civil war already brewing within the Republican Party.

Issac Bailey

Just over two years ago, the US Senate passed what some described as "the most monumental overhaul of US immigration law in generations" on a bipartisan 68-32 vote.

It included more money for border security, which would have increased an already unprecedented level of personnel on the US-Mexican border, and an onerous 13-year path to citizenship that would have required the undocumented to jump through all sorts of hoops and pay back taxes. There was nothing like amnesty about it. Immigration advocates and experts embraced it the way many on the left greeted health care reform, accepting that it was a good start despite the flaws inherent in every legislative compromise.