The 2024 primary campaigns have already changed the Republican Party

A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

The ultimate winner of the Republican presidential primary is TBD, but the primary campaign has already had an effect on the direction of the party, which continues to reckon with former President Donald Trump’s populism.

The GOP’s major candidates have crystalized on certain key issues (deporting millions of migrants) and fractured on others (reforming Social Security and Medicare).

These tectonic policy movements were on display Wednesday night at CNN’s primary debate in Iowa featuring former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and at a Fox News town hall featuring debate no-show Trump.

The view held by the major GOP presidential candidates that millions of undocumented immigrants currently in the US must be deported represents a striking shift for the party.

A surge of migrants and asylum-seekers crossing the US border in recent years has been a motivating issue for Republicans concerned about border security. Trump, who built his first presidential campaign on promises to build a wall on the southern border, has long expressed admiration for a 1950s mass-deportation effort.

CNN reported in November about his plans, if reelected, to amp up his immigration hard line with the building of large camps to house migrants waiting for deportation and tapping federal and local law enforcement to assist with large-scale arrests of undocumented immigrants across the country.

While Haley and DeSantis did not weigh in specifically on those ideas Wednesday night, they were asked by debate moderator Jake Tapper about the estimated more than 10 million undocumented immigrants already living in the US.

“The number of people that will be amnestied when I’m president is zero,”…