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.
and you keep missing the fact that HE DID bring out the words NUKE and MECCA in the same sentence.
And you keep MISSING the fact that the MSM will SKEWER him for it. It's called BAGGAGE. Look it up.
Why do you care about what the MSM says? They're not going to support Tancredo anyway, even if he had suggested sitting down and having tea with the terrorists if a nuke went off in an American city.
you should care what the MSM says. While they won't support him, you DON'T want to give them ANYTHING they *MIGHT* use to bet you over the head with.
Look at the CBS News fiasco last year. They needed something against President Bush so they COOKED UP A STORY, that was blown apart by Buckhead et. al. A similar firestorm would occur, and Tancredo wouldn't have the bully pulpit of the Presidency to get himself out there like President Bush does.
Even though it's dying a slow, agonizing death, the MSM still reachs millions upon millions at home every night.
Those millions add up after a while.
I just called Dane out for a filmed debate (RealPlayer and WindowsMedia), my views versus hers in a protected environment of her choosing at my expense. I did this because I'm tired of her constantly getting away with lying and smearing a good man's reputation without fear of retribution. It's time she put up or shut up. I'm giving her the chance to do so in an equally protected environment of her choosing on my dime but she'll have to reveal who she really is to do that. I think she's a gutless Democrat plant who won't show. We need to know if Dane and similar FReepers are sincerely concerned about America or are just shills for the ruling agenda. It's time to see who's who here.
It isn`t as much fun, but if you want some thing done, it ain`t going to happen when you are throwing rocks. Suggesting that Bush doesn`t care, or that is trying to destroy the country, thats just stupid.
and that has exactly WHAT to do with me?
Correction: Bush has been, for all intents and purposes, dead on the border issue, not slow.
You don't like the word conspire? What word would make you more comfortable? His nephew, btw, has been down in Mexico campaigning, already, making disgusting comments, imho, regarding the United States Law Enforcement (i.e. border patrol). Do you think the nephew of the President of the United States would DARE make negative remarks about U.S. law enforcement without the foreknowledge or "permission" of the President?
That you have sided with her views despite seeing for yourself that the enemies of America are stark raving mad. More often than not you have insinuated that we should ditch/give up/forget about the thousand plus lives who gave everything they had to help Iraq and Afghanistan attain the semblance of democracy. What does that have to do with you? I wouldn't be the first to wonder if you were ever in Iraq at all...especially considering how the soldiers there maintain a sincere belief that they can succeed in their mission. I feel that from them but you leave me cold.
LOL
The HELL I have sided with Dane.
rather the opposite.
I don't know what her issue is with Tancredo, but the entire premise of Dane's arguments, that illegal immigration is a great idea because we NEED the workers, is completely and totally stupid.
Get the facts straight.
You don't like Tancredo therefore you support illegal immigration. This is the mentality of the Tancredo Cult here on FR.
Nah, personally, I don't enjoy throwing rocks but being proper and well-mannered sure hasn't worked. For my part (and I'm one of many), I campaigned for him very hard, sent money, wrote letters, still write letters, have answered every public opinion poll I can, yet there is almost a complete and total meltdown of enforcing our laws toward illegals or stopping the criminal invasion.
All I receive from the AZ RINOs are form letters about how they are doing blah, blah, blah, yet we have anywhere from 11-20 million illegals in the country now, the bulk of whom started arriving when they heard about Bush's shamnesty.
Not one thing, not one thing has been done by most Congressmen or the President in the last five years, regarding the border. There have been only shams, dodges, double-talk, and Trojan Horses.
And the funny part is, I actually agree with his stances on a lot of things, but as a candidate, he sucks.
Kinda funny I think.
I want to see them all busted and sporting orange jumpsuits.
right...
Let's see here.....
Look up the record of John Kasich.
Or maybe Dick Gephardt.
Dennis Kuchnich anyone?
Newt Gingrich?
The theory isn't perfect, but it holds......for every one you name that succeeded, I can name a couple more that never came close.
That's how Clinton got into office. I didn't do it when Ross Perot ran. I thought my husband and other's who voted for Perot were wrong. I think most people who voted for Perot wish they hadn't.
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