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 would vote for this man .
He is right on in many regards .
He responds personally those that write him as well.
Not up in some lofty tower.....
Oxygen deprivation the cure or the cause? :-)
As Republicans look to the 2008 primaries in search of a candidate whose credentials and personality can triumph over Senator Clinton
Automatically assuming that billary will win over any republican candidate and that she has personality. Nice job MSM
I need to know:
Is Tancredo running on an ANTI-IMMIGRATION campaign?
Or and ANTI-ILLEGAL-IMMIGRATION campaign?
This is a most interesting smear if Tancredo is really for the latter.
We know Tancredo is against bilingual education and multiculturalism.
Given what is happening in Europe, we know Multiculturalism is a sure recipe for disaster.
What is more important is what he is for. He is for assimilation and integration of legal immigrants who arrive in this country on the basis of a sound immigration process.
BTTT
Truth doesn't go stale. One of the two major parties will win. The Constitution Party elected no one. When your party grows up give us a call.
Man, are you asking for a temper-tantrum beating.
So? Give me a call when you have a point to make.
That is a popular misconception. Hispanics who can vote are just as supportive of strict immigration policies as anyone else.
I'd vote third party before I'd vote for McCain.
Missing key word:
Tancredo Plots Anti-ILLEGAL Immigration
Typical MSM spin trying to make Conservatives our to be racist, xenophobic, anti-immigration nutjobs.
AAA...bloody. MEN...
Listen to Peroutka, and the Constitution Party platform.
Bias can also been seen in the incorrect title to this thread. Tancredo is not "anti-immigration", nor are the policies he proposes. He is anti-illegal immigration, and anti-mass legal immigration. That is an obvious distinction, and it is intentionally ignored by the media.
---"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." ---
Well, duh! For decades now the GOP has sat by and watched as mass immigration has altered the nation's demography in favor of the Democrats, and not lifted a finger to stop it despite having public opinion on the side of ending mass immigration. That public opinion still exists today, but the GOP still refuses to embrace it. Eventually, as McIntyre says, that public opinion will likely evaporate, though it should be noted that large percentages of Hispanics favor tighter restrictions on immigration. As to McIntyre's second point about the danger of appearing 'anti-immigrant'; well, any position short of amnesty for illegals and continuing mass legal immigration will be painted that way by the Left (radical ethinic interests groups, Democrats, media), and sadly, by entities on the right like the WSJournal editorial page, Jack Kemp, Grover Norquist, CATO, etc. Any thing short of accepting open borders will be demonized as 'mean.'
If the GOP insists on playing by the Left's rules, and accepts competition on their ground, then it is doomed to lose. The invidious idea that opposing mass immigration is akin to hostility towards immigrants, or even immigration, must be fought head on.
Same here, but he'd win without our votes.
That's why McCain must not win the primary. But Tancredo will siphon off a few percentage points from the conservatives, and it could become a real problem.
"If the GOP insists on playing by the Left's rules, and accepts competition on their ground, then it is doomed to lose. The invidious idea that opposing mass immigration is akin to hostility towards immigrants, or even immigration, must be fought head on."
Ta Da. Can't really nail it down any harder than that.
Well after 16 years of Clinton policies, maybe it's time for a Tancredo candidacy.
"No bias there (the headline). No mention of ILLEGAL immigration."
And no mention of simply enforcing the law, either.
Oh, I completely agree. I love Tancredo, but I don't want him in this race. It will cause too many people to vote McCain.
I think at this point our best hope is Allen in 08, and let tancredo keep pushing reform in Congress. He seems to be rallying alot of support lately.
There is a bill I believe in Congress right now, called the CLEAR Act, which has something like 100 co-sponsors alrwady. I believe Tancredo is very involved with it, and it is a tough bill.
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