Thread: Mr T (trancredo) Weighs in

From Mr T. in sunday Denver Post

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_4639955

guest commentary | littleton
GOP still at the ready
Election losses won't stop party's job
By Tom Tancredo
Article Last Updated:11/11/2006 03:47:05 AM MST

Republican losses on Election Day mean that Democrats will install San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House when the new Congress convenes in January. The bad news for Democrats is that when they win majority control, they can no longer get by just by attacking President Bush; they must come up with concrete proposals of their own.

If their plan for Iraq is not cut and run, what is it?

It is obvious to everyone that the 2006 election became a referendum on an unpopular war instead of a referendum on the total record of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress. The fact that America has not had a second terrorist attack since 2001 has lulled us into a false complacency, a complacency that allowed the Democrats to exploit frustrations over the war.

The fallout from the Mark Foley scandal was the second issue casting a long shadow over the elections. Lingering questions about the handling of Foley's misdeeds allowed the Democrats to exploit what the news media portray as a pandemic of corruption. Democrats benefited from a public mood inclined to blame Republicans for everything from original sin to rush-hour traffic.

Without doubt, Republicans face a formidable challenge. We must fight the appeasement wing of the Democratic Party on foreign policy and the class-warfare mantra of the self-styled progressives. Republican principles will not change, but the need for new leadership is clear.

Looking to 2007 and 2008, President Bush will have strong Republican support in Congress on national security matters, but on domestic issues he will need to listen to congressional Republicans instead of lecturing them. Given the deep Republican unhappiness over runaway government spending and illegal immigration, Republicans in Congress will play a larger role in defining a new Republican agenda.

Bush's widely unpopular guest worker amnesty plan should be shelved in favor of the more popular enforcement strategy. Virtually every Democratic and Republican candidate of every office (governor, Senate, Congress, state legislator, etc.) claimed to be tough on illegal immigration, or accuse their opponent of not being tough enough. Not a single Republican incumbent who lost his race can trace the loss to a position in favor of border security.

The Republican problem is not how to repackage or market its principles and policies. It is how to recapture and reinvigorate our base after years of confusing signals and policies that drifted away from those principles. This is the point made by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey in his survey of Republican mistakes in his recent Washington Post column, "Where We Went Wrong." He quite correctly did not include Republicans' strong stand for border security among their sins. It it obvious that a party seeking to recapture its base and honor its principles cannot be a party hostile to secure borders.

A divided government will mean a "target-rich environment" for Republicans seeking to develop a new Republican platform for 2008. This means that Republican contenders in the 2008 race for the White House are as likely to come from Congress as from the ranks of state governors or former big-city mayors.

Republicans are dedicated to winning the war on terror, bringing federal spending under control, achieving energy independence, and having secure borders for the first time in 40 years. The differences between the Republican program and the agenda of the Pelosi Democrats will be stark.

Despite the setbacks in 2006, Republicans can count on their secret weapon to even the odds. That secret weapon is the Democratic agenda. Once they take the wraps off their program of appeasement abroad and higher taxes at home, and after they begin back-pedaling on border security and the Patriot Act, Republicans will unite to protect our economy and our sovereignty.

Republican Tom Tancredo represents Colorado's 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

You can always count on Tom Tancredo to put the ball in the hoop and raise illegal immigration and secure borders to their rightful place .... TOP OF THE LIST.

Republicans need to focus on things that matter to our nation for our nation and drop and quickly back-off the personal issues.

As a 4th generation Republican I want our GOP to succeed and when we do be certain we do good things with the time we have in power .. things that benefit our country; things that benefit our workers; things that benefit our elderly; so that our young people have a bright prosperous healthy proud fair and optimistic future free of social burdens, debts and wars.

Sadly ... after 6 years of George Bush, we have a long way to go to achieve that.

"SAVE AMERICA, DEPORT CONGRESS." Judy

Judy put it on a bumper sticker I WILL BUY IT! LOL no truer words were ever spoken

Judy, Tancredo makes me wish I had been born a repub like you!

Mr. T! HAHA I like that!!