Posted on 11/22/2005 12:28:26 PM PST by Icelander
WASHINGTON - As Republicans look to the 2008 primaries in search of a candidate whose credentials and personality can triumph over Senator Clinton, one potential candidate has no expectation of winning on the basis of his personality or record - or of winning at all, for that matter. Instead, Rep. Thomas Tancredo, a Republican of Colorado, is hoping that his participation in Iowa's caucuses and early primaries will bring a victory for his signature issue: immigration reform.
He isn't waiting until 2008. Mr. Tancredo, 59, who has earned a national reputation for being an advocate for stricter border controls on Capitol Hill, has yet to make a firm declaration of his candidacy. But he is already making campaign stops from coast to coast and writing a book about immigration, tentatively titled "In Mortal Danger." It could serve as Mr. Tancredo's campaign platform and will be available in June, the congressman told The New York Sun yesterday.
In addition to laying the groundwork for his own bid, Mr. Tancredo is headlining campaign events for others who share his immigration philosophy. Reached yesterday by phone in Orange County, Calif., Mr. Tancredo was campaigning for the founder of the Minuteman Project, James Gilchrist, who is running for the congressional seat vacated by the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox.
Mr. Tancredo has also visited New Hampshire and South Carolina. Bay Buchanan, who is the sister and adviser of another opponent of illegal immigration and former presidential candidate, Patrick Buchanan, has helped Mr. Tancredo make contacts in such early primary states, the congressman said. This weekend, Mr. Tancredo was in Alta, Iowa, on his fourth visit to the crucial caucus state in the last six months.
Mr. Tancredo has said that he will throw his hat into the Iowa ring if no other Republican emerges who will "include immigration in their platform ... and do so with some degree of vigor, "the congressman said yesterday. So far, Mr. Tancredo said a former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich - who wrote in a recent report for the Center for Immigration Studies that immigrants' dual citizenship posed an "insidious challenge" - has come the closest to being satisfactorily strong on the issue.
Yet Mr. Tancredo appears to enjoy some advantages Mr. Gingrich and his likely 2008 competitors do not, principally the support of an influential Iowa Republican, Rep. Steven King. Mr. King is one of 91 members of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, of which Mr. Tancredo is founder and chairman.
"Tom Tancredo needs to keep coming to Iowa," Mr. King said. "I want him on the stage in this debate."
Messrs. Tancredo and King, and the executive director of the Iowa Republican Party, Cullen Sheehan, indicated yesterday that Mr. Tancredo will have a natural base of support among 2008 caucus-goers.
While Iowa is further removed from the issue of illegal immigration than border states such as California and Arizona, Mr. Tancredo said, it has been surprisingly receptive to his message of ending illegal immigration and reducing the number of legal migrants permitted to enter the country. His Iowa audiences, the congressman said, "are as concerned about it as any group I've ever spoken to in Arizona."
Mr. Sheehan said that illegal immigration is a matter of importance to Iowa's caucus-goers, saying that most "want people to obey the law, and they want our government to uphold the laws we have." Mr. King said jobs in the agricultural industry were also a factor, citing as an example the Farmland Foods packing plant in Dennison, Iowa. Ten years ago, Mr. King said, eight Hispanics worked at the facility compared to 850 today.
Iowans, however, are focused mostly on national security: "How can a nation have a border they don't defend?" Mr. King said. "If it's not really a border, then you're not really a nation."
Mr. King said he also anticipated Mr. Tancredo's message to resonate with caucus-goers because of his focus on the cultural effects of massive immigration. Mr. Tancredo said that today's immigrants decline to become Americans, leading to a "balkanized" society. Immigration, Mr. Tancredo said, fuels and reinforces the divisive multiculturalist ideologies propagated by American elites in academia, the press, and politics.
In fact, it was outrage at multiculturalism in American schools that first brought Mr. Tancredo's attention to immigration. The congressman is a former junior high school teacher, and the schools' insistence on bilingual education and hostility toward America in textbooks and classrooms, combined with his reading of Arthur Schlesinger's "The Disuniting of America" in 1992, served as his road-to-Damascus moment on the need for immigration reform, Mr. Tancredo said.
Mr. Tancredo, a Denver native, left teaching to take a seat in Colorado's House of Representatives in 1976, and later served in the federal Department of Education under Presidents Reagan and Bush. In 1998, Mr. Tancredo was elected to Congress.
After founding the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus in 1999, Mr. King said, Mr. Tancredo's "credibility is going up as the American public puts pressure on other members of Congress" on the matter of border security. When Mr. Tancredo first introduced amendments to restrict immigration, Mr. King said, the measures would receive 20 to 25 votes. "Three years ago, that same amendment got 60 to 70 votes. Now, that same amendment will get 100 or 110."
If Mr. Tancredo's star is rising among American voters and in the House, he may not be winning friends in the circles of Republican leadership.
The editor of RealClearPolitics.com, John McIntyre, said yesterday that Mr. Tancredo's candidacy poses "a real problem" for the GOP in 2008.
While the Colorado congressman's message might win votes as a hot-button issue in 2008 and 2012, Mr. McIntyre said, demographic trends suggested the position might prove electoral poison in 2016 and beyond as the American electorate becomes increasingly Hispanic, and if the Tancredo platform paints national Republicans as "anti-immigrant."
For Republicans to succeed in quieting Mr. Tancredo, satisfying the base's yearning for a serious immigration policy, and to avoid being tarred as nativist, it would be necessary for the GOP to nominate a popular candidate with a reputation for being a moderate-such as Senator McCain, of Arizona, or Mayor Giuliani - who would then embrace the issue in the 2008 campaign.
I'm seriously considering Tancredo's candidacy myself.
The man's a rock-solid conservative, and he's got guts.
"Why say that(we will have permanent open borders) when you know that won`t happen."
Here's why. In short, read NAFTA and CAFTA about the "free movement of peoples"
See this, originally posted by "the gillman" (hope I'm not crossing the wrong line by not asking you first gillman, but more folks need to see this):
Start with this summary by Phyllis Schlafly, staunch conservative and friend to Ronald Reagan.
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/july05/05-07-13.html
...This CFR document, called "Building a North American Community," asserts that George W. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin "committed their governments" to this goal when they met at Bush's ranch and at Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005. The three adopted the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" and assigned "working groups" to fill in the details....
This was the meeting where Bush called the Minutemen "Vigilantes."
...the CFR document calls for "a permanent tribunal for North American dispute resolution." Get ready for decisions from non-American judges who make up their rules ad hoc and probably hate the United States anyway...
Bye bye Constitution.
... The CFR document demands that we implement "the Social Security Totalization Agreement negotiated between the United States and Mexico." That's code language for putting illegal aliens into the U.S. Social Security system, which is bound to bankrupt the system...
Bye bye your retirement.
...U.S. taxpayers are supposed to create a major fund to finance 60,000 Mexican students to study in U.S. colleges...
How generous of you to support the higher education of all those foreignors. Will you have enough left over for your own children?
... The CFR document calls for allowing Mexican trucks "unlimited access" to the United States, including the hauling of local loads between U.S. cities...
Look out for that big scary truck!
Talk about drug smuggling and terrorist heaven.
... To ensure that the U.S. government carries out this plan so that it is "achievable" within five years, the CFR calls for supervision by a North American Advisory Council of "eminent persons from outside government....
See? You don't get to vote at all. You just get to pay and surrender your rights at the door.
You can see the plan here.
http://www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=8102
Pay particular attention the portion on "Dissenting Views."
That's where some say they haven't sold us out enough, and the the others say they'll have trouble with, "racists, xenophobes and nationalists" who aparrently don't approve of being robbed to support the utopian dream of these traitors.
The talking points of the OBL's on this site come directly from there.
Here's Senator John Cornyn's bill to establish the first building block of this momentous betrayal.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.2941:
Highlights:
SEC. 3. PURPOSES.
The purposes of the Fund shall be--
(1) to promote economic and infrastructure integration among Canada, Mexico, and the United States;
(2) to promote education and economic development in Mexico; and
(3) to reduce the wealth gap between Mexico and Canada, and between Mexico and the United States.
Reduce the wealth gap.
Pure Marxism, from your republican administration.
More:
SEC. 4. PROJECTS FUNDED.
(a) IN GENERAL- The Fund shall make grants for projects to carry out the purposes described in section 3, including projects--
(1) to construct roads in Mexico to facilitate trade between Mexico and Canada, and Mexico and the United States;
(2) to develop and implement post-secondary education programs in Mexico;
(3) to install telecommunications technologies throughout Mexico; and
(4) to construct other infrastructure that will carry out such purposes.
(Part two, there's your children's college fund, going to Mexicans.)
More:
SEC. 5. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FUND.
(a) IN GENERAL- The terms of the agreement establishing the Fund shall, subject to the limitation in subsection (b), require the Governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States to contribute to the Fund.
(Governments? They're talking about pillaging your paychecks!)
The terms of the agreement establishing the Fund shall require that the Fund operate for an initial period of 10 years.
By then, there will be nothing left of the Republic.
Bingo! Some of the most vocal opponents of illegal immigration are patriotic Americans of Hispanic heritage who took the time and trouble to come to this country legally. They deeply resent being identified with illegal aliens.
It's not impossible. According to this article, Tancredo has a lot of support in Iowa. If he can win the caucus there he's going to get more serious money to keep going. And if he can score a win in the New Hamshire primary, he's a much more serious candidate. Don't forget that California moves their primary up to March in the next election. There are many people here sick of the illegal thing. If he can win that one, he's already got a lot of delegates. It's going to be interesting.
"Don Quixote is alive and well...."
ain't it the truth.
The kid that cried wolf once too often, fits quite well.
It's like warning an employee over and over, and not seeing any improved results. Eventually, that employee gets fired.
One must fight for what they believe while at the same time be a realist. Vote for the person closest to your beliefs while still keeping in mind that they must ultimately be electable. Voting for candidate who reflects your views perfectably but doesn't have a chance in he!! of being elected is a wasted vote.
Reality: Most U.S. citizen Hispanics vote for liberal democrats. Gore won their vote. Kerry won their vote.
And Gore lost and Kerry lost.
And it will all happen in less than 20 years!
But at least I will be able to hold my head up knowing I didn't vote (again) for someone who won't enforce the existing laws on the books wrt Illegal Immigration.
sw
Sure, but it's still early on, and it's just the primaries. Reagan came out of nowhere to almost take down Ford in 76, despite the "realist" was for Ford.
Now I probably wouldn't vote 3rd party in the general election, but the threat being there helps prevent Republicans from becoming Democrats.
Right and wrong, and personal responsibility come to mind.
Like all of us, politicians need to be held accountable and take responsibility for their actions. They are not above responsibility.
Should voting for someone based on money, popularity and power be the deciding factor in giving someone a job? I don't think so. Unfortunately this seems to be the norm in todays America, and looking at the results, this is not good.
Where can I get some peseo's to send to the RNC? I think that's a great idea.
Reagan was always considered electable. He had just missed the nomination years earlier. I would never suggest voting for someone just because they're electable....just not voting for someone who obviously isn't.
Just find someone who is electable and the closest to your personel views and vote for him or her. A vote any other way is a vote for far worse.
When your party grows up give us a call.
When your's grows up to stand on principle give us a call.
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