Tancredo Plots Anti-Immigration 2008 Campaign

New York Sun ^ | November 22, 2005 | MEGHAN CLYNE

[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.

[jackibutterfly]

"No bias there (the headline). No mention of ILLEGAL immigration>

Yeah, I caught that, too! Stinkin' liberals!

[inquest]

Once the machine is in place, then go for the Big Seat, when there will be a realistic chance of doing something other than helping a smelly hippie get into the White House.

Your last sentence shows why you fear the CP. The GOP should fear them for the same reason, and if they don't want that scenario to happen, they know what they need to do.

[inquest]

You just proved my point. It shows that it got your attention, and it should have the GOP's as well.

[peyton randolph]

My vote counts the same as Bill Gates.

Difference is that if Bill Gates tells a politician that he isn't voting for him, the politician is likely to listen to Bill and want to know why. Nothing personal...but money talks.

[The Old Hoosier]

I don't think Tancredo is generally more conservative than Brownback -- he's probably a lot like Allen on most issues -- but he is better on immigration.

That doesn't mean I'm going to vote for the nut. I care too much about abortion, guns, and taxes to throw my vote away on this guy and elect anti-gun, shaky-on-abortion, bad-on-taxes McCain.

Those are my three criteria for any candidate, and that's why I backed Toomey and Schaeffer and a whole bunch of long-shot conservatives in primaries in the past.

[Aetius]

Well, I don't think Tancredo seriously thinks that he can win. In the past he has said a candidacy would simply be to make sure the issue isn't ignored, or that the McCain/Bush amnesty approach isn't the only side presented.

And I don't accept that Tancredo is a bomb-thrower. That is just a charge leveled at him by critics who seek to demonize him, and thereby by marginalize his message by association. It is an effective, though shameless tactic, because it makes people feel guilty about holding practically the same views as Tancredo, and polls prove that most Americans do just that.

Finally, I don't see how the problem will be on its way to being solved by then. Bush's approach may not offer a direct path to citizenship for illegals, but it pretty much opens up the low-skilled US labor market to the entire world. The McCain/Kennedy bill is an amnesty, no matter how much Mr. Straight Talk Express denies it. Hopefully, both approaches will be defeated in the House.

[inquest]

Not to mention that many companies that use illegals to do work for them have lots of money that will flow into election coffers.

Yup, the only people who agree with him are 75%-80% of the voting public. Not the most powerful constituency in the country, it's true, but it's been known to have some influence from time to time.

[af_vet_rr]

Build local organizations get get people elected to school boards and county commissions, then work up to seats on the state legislature and the US Congress.

That sounds great on paper (or on the screen as it were), but the problem is, you have money and influence coming down from the top to make sure that this doesn't happen.

Example: Run a Conservative candidate against a Republican candidate at the lowest of government levels - at the city or county level. If the Conservative candidate looks to be doing well, you'll find Republicans from the state level (and maybe above depending on the city or county) coming down to help.

Everybody knows how the game is played, there won't be any sneaking in through the backdoor. Both major parties know how to go after third parties.

Don't get me wrong, you'll win seats here and there, but eventually you'll lose those seats, because neither party will let it stand - they'd almost rather have the other major party in there than have a third party.

[dagnabbit]

Almost no Democrats support border and immigration controls.

Quite a few Republicans do.

[fallujah-nuker]

And so now it all comes full circle. We get told we're not supposed to vote third-party, because the Democrats will win; that if you want to move things further to the right, do it in the GOP primaries. Now we're not supposed to vote "too conservative" in the GOP primaries, because otherwise McCain will be the nominee. So the upshot is, unless we're willing to color outside the lines that have been presented to us by the party hacks, we'll still have to dance to their tune. Sorry, but this cycle needs to be broken somewhere.

Heads I win, tails you lose.

[Brilliant]

Unfortunately, it won't get him anywhere.

[bybybill]

Why say that(we will have permanent open borders) when you know that won`t happen.

[God luvs America]

is there a link to this story??

[Mulch]

Note to self: Disregard anything said by someone who refers to the republican party as "Pubbies".

[inquest]

Brownback's a non-starter. I saw him on the NewsHour shortly after Alito's nomination, and he was pitiful. He was a guest along with Dick Durbin, and Durbin was in non-stop slander mode, saying that Bush caved to the "far right" nominating someone so far "outside the mainstream" - the typical Democrat pap on judges. And Brownback never directly challenged any of it. He just let Durbin make monkeys out of conservatives without standing up for them at all. I completely wrote him off after that. Whatever "correct" positions he may have taken, he's useless if he doesn't actually lift a finger to stand up for them.

As for Allen, if he's so much like Tancredo, then why do you think he has a better shot at the nomination than Tancredo does?

[fallujah-nuker]

Difference is that if Bill Gates tells a politician that he isn't voting for him, the politician is likely to listen to Bill and want to know why. Nothing personal...but money talks.

I can't cancel out his money, but I cancel out his vote. When it comes to choice between getting more money or more votes, I'd choose the votes.

[af_vet_rr]

Yup, the only people who agree with him are 75%-80% of the voting public. Not the most powerful constituency in the country, it's true, but it's been known to have some influence from time to time.

It's rare they have that kind of influence though - that 75%-80% of the voting public may not represent much when it comes to the percentage of contributions.

What he needs is a capable organizations behind him, that can handle a well-organized grass-roots movement. The perfect model would be the NRA.

If you can take those of us Conservatives who are fed up with how things are going, and you can give them one voice, and you can organize how and where their contributions are going, then you'll have something.

Unfortunately though, what you get instead is people like me and you complaining about it on a forum. Even if you magnify it across the country, it's still a bunch of individuals versus the various groups/companies that have professional lobbyists, and that can steer lots of money to wherever they want.

We also have complacency working against us - many in the GOP just vote GOP and that's it - they don't question the candidates - as long as the party says "this is who should be our candidate", they'll go along with it. Tancredo could have incredible support, but if the GOP leadership says they want somebody else, he'll find himself destroyed in the media, to the point where he is not viable (or at least not seen as being viable, which is the same thing).

[Plutarch]

The Pubbies need the Hispanic vote to win...

Let us assume that the voting Hispanics here now are all in favor of more Mexicans coming in illegally to compete with them, even though polls show otherwise. Which red states would turn blue due to a reduction in the the Hispanic Republican vote?

Maybe NM, CO, NV. Florida not too likely, as the Hispanics in FL are largely Cuban.

Many of the Blue states have very low Hispanic numbers, and a Republican differentiating himself on the very popular issue of border security might stand to gain white votes in Blue or competitive States such as NH, Iowa, MN, MI, OR, WI, OH and MO.

[The Old Hoosier]

Brownback and Allen are serious candidates, Tancredo is not very bright and he has a penchant for coming unhinged. I'll never understand how the guy made it to Congress.

And BTW, Bush DID cave to the far right in junking that Miers woman and nominating Alito -- and thank goodness he did!

[Columbine]

If the Constitution Party wants to matter, they need to start from the bottom up, instead of making a fuss over a Presidential candidate who will get 1 out of every 2000 votes.

Build local organizations get get people elected to school boards and county commissions, then work up to seats on the state legislature and the US Congress.

Once the machine is in place, then go for the Big Seat, when there will be a realistic chance of doing something other than helping a smelly hippie get into the White House.

Exactly!!

It takes a lot of work to build a new party. A lot more work than it would to change one with the machine already in place.