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.
Tancredo running as a third-party candidate would scare the bageebees out of the republicans since they are well aware of what happened to them when Perot ran. I thin they'll be wiser this time and make nice with Tancredo.
Do not forget the Black vote as there is a deep anger at the hispanics and their Dem allies riding roughshod over the Black community
I have been in several meetings here in California where Dem representatives, Dem BLACK representatives, have been shouted down when they try to sell that "we need to form coalitions with the hispanics" bunkum
The Black vote is up for grabs in 2008
Remember,you heard it here first. Black - hispanic tensions can be translated into votes
Nothing gets by you!
So is it OK to keep increasing the size of this liberal voting block, since in two national elections, the block was still too small to ensure liberal victory?
Of course the Tancredo Cult on FR thinks he will get 99% of the vote because in their minds they represent the vast majority of voters. If they did, John Kerry would have won in 2004 because Tancredo would have received millions of write in votes. Neither happened.
The sad thing is the Tancredo Cult viciously attacks anyone who doesn't worship the man and accuses them of supporting illegal immigration. They're obviously too dense to realize that some people just don't like Tancredo because he is as much of a loose cannon as Howard Dean and is as self obsessed as Bill Clinton. He called for Tom Delay to resign (long before Ronnie Earle issued his bogus indictments) and is big buddies with a man who wants to destroy the Republican Party. His position on immigration immaterial when it comes to the opinion of the man.
Voting Constitution Party is akin to thinking you can defy gravity.
The old bend over line of thinking. The Tancredo's and the 3rd parties on the conservative side only show up when there is discontent with the Republicans. I refuse to fear someone taking office like a Dem or McCain because I decided to actually vote for someone I like.
After two speeches I saw Weldon make last week I'm much less enamored of him. Tancredo is not a politician (in the strictist sense of the word) and I like that. When he went head to head with the WH over immigration and was purposely not invited to the WH Christmas Party he shrugged it off with a "that's the breaks" attitude. I like that, it means he is willing to swim against the tide.
I will vote for whoever I damned well choose to vote for. If the party thinks they can blame me for their loss, then they can consider my vote lost for good.
Amen!
If some FReepers here think they can blame me for their loss then they can KMA.
At this point, given the alternatives I've seen so far, I would be very tempted and probably would vote for him in our AZ primary (especially against pro-immigration/Kennedy McCain). Electing Tancredo would be the equivalent of sending an earthquake through the Republican Party and sometimes earthquakes can be fun. We still have time to save our Country .... but in three years I'm not certain how much time, if any, we'll have left.
Anyone can rise to power and become "electable". I would never suggest to anyone they vote for an individual based on power, money, or popularity, which I presumes means "electability". One should only vote for the person they feel would do the best job. Not on popularity/electability.
Suggesting that someone should vote for someone, just because others say the have a "better" chance, seems offensive, and I personally would never follow that advice.
Bush ain't no Albert Einstein but you voted for him...
Considering the fact that 47% of Hispanic voters voted in favor of the anti-illegal alien measure Prop 200 in Arizona last year, it seems that one of the best ways for Republican candidates to get the Hispanic vote is to be anti-illegal immigration.
And maybe when the Dems are in power, we won't have elections any more. :P
I love you too!
We can have more than one reason for doing things.
Thanks for posting that picture of Angela 'Bay' Buchanan, who served as treasurer of Ronald Reagan's presidential campaigns in 1976 and 1980, and who was appointed to the position of Treasurer of the United States by President Reagan in 1981. Ronald Reagan must have had a lot of confidence in her, and respected what she had accomplished for him and for the Republican Party.
Yep. I agree. Yet, there are many people who think he can do no wrong. Just because he is NOT Kerry.
Tancredo is unelectable!
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Support our Minutemen Patriots!
Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!
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