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.
According to their About Us page, Tancredo and Bay Buchannan are the only chairpersons of that PAC.
It did go through, and thank you.
LOL!
Even that doesn't describe it. He's been actively hostile to border security. Any President who, among other things, submits a budget to Congress that leaves out funding for Border Patrol agents that Congress had just authorized, and smears the Minutemen as "vigilantes" when he knows for a fact that they're anything but, can only be described as having the same views as the people who wrote that CFR recommendation. Anyone who puts this in the same category as Black Helicopters or similar such nonsense is a moron, plain and simple.
You're right...I don't know what I was thinking.
I'm so mad about this, I could spit.
Well, if that means coming up with a good candidate for '08, I'm all up for that. But if despite our efforts we don't get one, I wouldn't consider it smart to just vote for him. When the difference between the two major candidates gets below a certain threshold, then it becomes advantageous in the long term to vote for a third candidate who'll signal to the major parties what it is they lack.
I would especially advocate this for people who don't live in battleground states.
Unfortunatly, many others don't get it.
I don't care to bring 'conservatives' over to my side because they already are. I'm at least as conservative as you. You're just mentally deficient - that's the difference.
Second, I don't need to appeal to someone to try to save their own country.
How is that working for you?</sarcasm>
It's kinda comical, but typical.
They have won, you just haven't noticed.
There was a joke bacl when Goldwater was dirty tricked with the A-Bomb add, that went something like this.
They told me if I voted for Goldwater Taxes would go up and the Vietnam war would expand. Well I voted for him and sure enough they were right.
How illogical. This seems to say that successfully reducing Hispanic immigration now might be a political winner in 08 and 12 but you'd pay for in 16 as the electorate becomes increasingly Hispanic but you actually made the electorate less Hispanic if you succeeded in 2008 and 2012.
A whole lot better than it is for your candidates. No sarcasm needed.
"I don't care to bring 'conservatives' over to my side because they already are. I'm at least as conservative as you. You're just mentally deficient - that's the difference.
Second, I don't need to appeal to someone to try to save their own country."
Oh, I see now, if I don't want to vote for a RINO to prevent a real conservative from winning a primary, that makes me "mentally deficient". Good luck with that!
yeah....
I would rather have Sanford as he is already a Governor....
we will see...it's going to be interesting....
I think legal immigrants who THINK, are against illegal immigration. They should, at least, because they are the most affected by illegals. I have not seen statistics on this assumption of mine, but I have the gut-feeling legal immigrants get for the most part low-skilled, low-paying jobs... which the illegals take away from them when they come along and accept lower working conditions. Please correct me if I am wrong on this one.
Sorry but you do need it. Here have a smily face maybe that will make you feel all better<(•¿•)>
Don't change the truth one bit, you still have an open borders president, who has spent more money that any president in history. And probably the only one who never vetoed a single piece of legislation in two terms.
But the libs hate him, so therefore he must be on our side.
(was somebody mentioning something about sarcasm, by the way? ;-)
I can't because FR now saves resources by cutting post histories short (I checked)...but you've defended NoPardon's positions as well as other dubious characters in the past.
Let's see: You brashly post opinions as if they should be regarded as facts, you insulted Extremely Extreme Extremist (who I think is a stand up-guy despite having moderating duties), you're a jockhead and work on a lot of presumption while playing an excellent dupe for political correctness. On top of that you trash the only Rep out there consistantly standing up for your culture's continuence while presuming it's beyond threatening. I wrote a lot more but thought it was beyond cruel. I acknowledge that I don't know squat about sports, any real sense in Free Trade policy, how an amnesty is good for our country, why preserving what's left of our culture is a bad thing or why blindly following a cult of peronality is good just because that personality is a Republican. I'm going to keep my weapons regardless.
I'm not fond of wasting time and effort so I call myself off. Write me off the Christmas card list (especially if they all wish people "Happy Holidays") and know that I do wish you the best.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.