Thread: Tancredo working to turn the tide

PLEASE CLICK ARTCLE FOR PICTURES AND 2004 CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS!

http://www.denverpost.com/frontpage/ci_2780117

Tancredo working to turn the tide
By Michael Riley
Denver Post Staff Writer

Las Vegas - With the desert heat still stifling well after dark, an air conditioner whisks an arctic breeze through the cavernous convention center. On stage, the keynote speaker addresses a Memorial Day gathering of activists called Unite to Fight Against Illegal Immigration, his voice rising and falling as he fires up the crowd.

He warns darkly of the "Balkanization" of the United States from mass immigration and the dire threat of the "cult of multiculturalism." But the tide is turning, he tells his audience, and they are on the winning side.

From the dim amphitheater, someone yells out, "Tancredo for president!" Several fans wait just offstage to nab an autograph or snap a picture.

Congress' most vociferous critic of current immigration policy, Colorado's Tom Tancredo, is in an ebullient mood, and there isn't much these days that can spoil it.

No longer quite a pariah, he's still held at arm's length by many in the Republican Party. He has never had a major piece of legislation dealing with immigration passed - nor does he ever expect to.

But his laserlike focus on a single issue - and a roiling anger around the issue among the conservative rank and file - also has earned him a national profile virtually unrivaled among Colorado's congressional delegation.

He's as well known in Texas, Arizona and California as he is in Colorado. In the last election cycle, Tancredo raised more money in Los Angeles than he did in Colorado Springs; more in Norcross, Ga., than he did in Breckenridge.

"He's a great American hero," said Evelyn Miller, a retired schoolteacher and grandmother from Irvine, Calif., with two Tancredo-for-president bumper stickers on her car.

"Eighty percent of Americans think illegal immigration is a serious problem, and no other politician will even bring it up," she said.

Ramping up for 2008

Unimposing but with a habit of speaking his mind,

Tancredo has carefully crafted an image as a Republican maverick willing to challenge both his party and his president.

With most analysts betting that immigration will play a major role in the 2008 presidential election, the Littleton lawmaker and his staff are ramping up to ride the wave.

He plans to tour several primary states, calling for militarization of the border and a crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

If no other serious candidate appears who will support those goals, Tancredo says he plans to enter the Republican presidential primaries.

"It's such an odd thing to talk about," Tancredo told The Denver Post. But "if there is no other person ... then we have no choice" but to enter the presidential race.

That's not such a far-fetched idea, according to analysts, as long as he doesn't plan on winning.

"Even fringe presidential candidates end up with more airtime than members of Congress. It's quixotic if you think you've got a realistic chance, but not if your goal is to continue to get airtime and get the press to bring up these issues," said Norman Ornstein, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Both critics and allies say Tancredo and his message have been given a boost by a confluence of events. Where they disagree is whether those events add up to the political equivalent of a brush fire or a wildfire.

Last fall, voters in Arizona passed Proposition 200, restricting state services to illegal immigrants, despite heavy opposition to the initiative from state leaders in both parties.

In April, as many as 1,000 volunteers, many of them armed, descended on the Arizona border for a month to stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the United States. The heavily publicized event embarrassed Department of Homeland Security officials and focused unprecedented attention on the country's leaky Southwestern border.

At the same time, illegal immigration has become the issue of the moment for conservative talk-radio hosts from Boston to Los Angeles. In the first five months of 2005, Tancredo appeared on talk-radio stations 65 times - 23 in April alone.

In many of those appearances, he burnished his image as one of few politicians willing to speak truth to power.

Among his oft-repeated stories, Tancredo likes to tell of being called to heel by Karl Rove in 2002 for disparaging President Bush's border policy. Rather than hide the scolding - Tancredo says he was told "never to darken the door of the White House again" - he sent out a news release.

"I don't want to say he made me a martyr, but he certainly raised my profile," Tancredo said, smiling broadly as he sipped coffee last week outside a Starbucks near his office in Centennial.

Even Tancredo's critics concede that the lawmaker has tapped into a powerful political current, one driven in part by the country's shifting demographics and the presence in the United States of 8 million to 12 million illegal immigrants.

The fact that he has fostered a nationwide constituency has given Tancredo the ability to influence his Washington colleagues with blasts of grassroots outrage that may help turn their votes on immigration legislation his way.

His name has even become a verb. To some colleagues who have been flooded with faxes and phone calls unleashed by the congressman's troops, they have been "Tancredoed."

But the outsider path has its limits. Tancredo is not on the Judiciary Committee, the main panel with jurisdiction over immigration issues in the House. He has introduced dozens of immigration-related bills and amendments, but none has passed.

His arm-twisting of Republican colleagues also has created resentment. In 2004, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R- Texas, scolded Tancredo for using Team America, the political action committee

Tancredo founded, to fund primary challenges to Republican lawmakers with whom he disagreed. Joe Hunter, chief of staff to Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, a frequent target of Tancredo's wrath, said the tactics have left the Colorado lawmaker alienated from many in his own party.

"He burned a lot of bridges," Hunter said.

Tapping into racism?

But for many of his supporters, Tancredo's unwillingness to play nice in Washington has only polished his appeal.

"You have one individual in the entire nation with any notoriety who is willing to speak up for America," Tim Donnelly, a small-business man from Twin Peaks, Calif., said of Tancredo.

Donnelly said that over the last several years, he has watched as his blue-collar friends have found it harder to get work, squeezed out by cheaper immigrant workers.

Finally fed up, Donnelly decided to join the volunteers on the Arizona border this spring. He carried with him a large U.S. flag topped with a brass eagle, a symbol of what he was defending.

But Tancredo may also be tapping into something less lofty than patriotism, said Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery, Ala.-based organization that tracks hate groups.

"Part of the problem is that a lot of people who are attracted to an anti-immigration message are attracted for reasons of race," Beirich said. "You have to be very clear to avoid attracting those kinds of people, and Tancredo hasn't really done much to stay away from them."

In Las Vegas, some conference participants assailed what they referred to as the inferior culture of immigrants, while others gave lengthy presentations on the diseases the undocumented carry into the U.S.

Barbara Coe, head of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, accused Antonio Villaraigosa, the newly elected mayor of Los Angeles, of seeking to return Southern California to Mexico and decried the rape and
murder of U.S. citizens at the hands of "illegal-alien barbarians."

Coe called Tancredo a "gold-plated, card-carrying patriot" and, after his speech, hugged him onstage. The lawmaker is a recipient of an award from Coe's organization, and she contributed $500 to his last campaign.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled her organization a hate group, a tag Tancredo denies. But he says he isn't responsible for his allies' views, only his own - and that voters will see the difference.

"I am going to just continue to say what I say, be who I am, and people can take it or leave it," Tancredo said. "I hope they will do that based on what I actually say, not what people say about me or or what anybody who happens to like me says about me."

Carlos Espinosa, who worked as Tancredo's press secretary until last month, said some of his allies present a problem as the lawmaker tries to launch himself onto a national stage.

"I don't think he ever saw himself being mentioned in the mouths of anybody as a person who should run for president," Espinosa said. "Now that it's happened, he knows that it's a different game when you're being looked at under a microscope."

Espinosa said his former boss faces another hurdle: Having carved out a career as a political outsider, can he now recast himself as a politician who can appeal to the mainstream, with all the compromises that entails?

"If Tom really wants to be a serious candidate, he's going to have to change the way he operates," Espinosa said. "He's going to have to, in some sense, sell out. He's going to have to be what people want him to be.

"He'd have to no longer be a Tom Tancredo to be a national candidate. He'd have to sacrifice the cause over himself, and I don't think he's willing to do that."

Staff writer Michael Riley can be reached at 303-820-1614 or mriley@denverpost.com.

Espinosa said his former boss faces another hurdle: Having carved out a career as a political outsider, can he now recast himself as a politician who can appeal to the mainstream, with all the compromises that entails?

"recast himself as a politician who can appeal to the mainstream with all the compromises that entails?"

Give me a break. WE ARE THE MAINSTREAM and WE WILL COMPROMISE NOTHING!!

Look at California Proposition 187...I just learned that the VOTERS approved that....and a FEDERAL COURT ruled provisions unconstitutional in suits filed by MALDEF and the ACLU!!

If anyone thinks a Federal Court reflects the opinions and views of American Voters for President, think again, because that has not happened.....yet.

If anyone thinks MALDEF and the ACLU reflect the opinions and views of American Voters for President, think again, because that has not happened yet......either!!

TOM TANCREDO FOR PRESIDENT!!

Here are the facts:

California Voters approved Proposition 187 only to be upstaged by MALDEF, ACLU and a Federal Court Judge on whether or not ILLEGAL AIENS, CITIZENS of FOREIGN NATIONS can invade our country and demand education, welfare, medical care, jobs, assistance, and most importantly REMAIN in the state of California in VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW??? Is this a bad dream or what?

Arizona Voters approved Proposition 200 only to be upstaged by Governor Napolitano who refuses to stop sending checks as if she has some authority to over-ride the will of the people? Is this a bad dream or what?

WHERE IS AMERICA? We are here. We've been here. Citizens of Arizona and California have NOT BEEN ASLEEP! They have been working hard, spending money, campaigning, working to save the their state! Does anyone know how much it costs to get a Proposition 187 on the Ballot and WIN? Someone posted an article late yesterday or early this morning, $2,000,000 in 1994 money!! That would be $3,000,000 or more in today's dollars....all put to waste by a FEDERAL COURT JUDGE. And Proposition 200 in Arizona....how much was spent? Alot plus all the time and energy and emotions of American Citizens standing up for their country....ground to a halt by a GOVERNOR!!

America is here. This is proof. Citizens of these great states have abided by the law; worked the diligent mechanics of our democratic system; succeeded to secure the EXPRESSED WILL OF THE CITIZENRY only to be SHOT DOWN; CUT DOWN AT THE KNEES by "individuals with power"...a Federal Court and a Governor forcing American Citizens to lose their jobs, their livelihoods, their medical care, their national security, their peace of mind, their way of life, their neighborhoods, their communities and in California 10,000 LIVES to FOREIGN NATIONALS!

IT IS OUTRAGEOUS!!!

OUR COURTS ARE ESTABLISHED AND PAID TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS ONLY!!

The economic damage, the loss of life, the travesty in California "FALLS SQUARE ON THE SHOULDERS" of the ACLU, MALDEF, and a FEDERAL COURT! This spilled blood, this loss of life, this loss of economic and social security is on their hands and has been dripping all across California for over a DECADE!!

HOW DOES A NATION GET TO THIS POINT?

ONE ANSWER:

UNDUE INFLUENCE ON OUR INSTITUTIONS THAT CREATE OUR DEMOCRACY BY:

Tax Exempt Not-for-Profit Organizations Whose Mission WE Now Know IS TO END THE UNITED STATES.

In a Word:

TRAITORS!!!!

"If Tom really wants to be a serious candidate, he's going to have to change the way he operates," Espinosa said. "He's going to have to, in some sense, sell out. He's going to have to be what people want him to be.

I believe that's the very thing that's WRONG with politics today. We end up electing those who promise to deliver everything to everybody...No one can please everyone. The last time that we had a president who was his own person and politics be damned was when we had Harry Truman in office. Everyone else has pandered to each and every 'group with a grievance' or petitioner with a dollar.

Speaking for myself, I don't WANT another sell-out. Heaven knows we've had far too many of those.

CARRY ON, TOM!!

RR

Judy, you're quite right about Prop 187..I was never so glad to see the folks out there voting that in...and so to see a federal judge overrule the will of the people.

We should demand that congress close the offices of those federal judges who are legislating from the bench. When they no longer serve the American people they shouldn't have an office. The precedent for this was ---don't hold my feet to the fire on this, but I think--the Monroe administration closed some federal judges' offices.

RR

RR

I agree with you, I want Tom just as he is. This next election, as far as I am concerned is a "one issue election" for me.

I don't care what party he runs under, he has my vote.

In fact I hope he changes to a third party, no ties to either one would be just fine with me.

Now to figure out what to do with the Judges overriding the will of the people, there must be something that can be done.

What to do about the Federal Judges?

FIRE THE JUDGES!!

For violating the Will of the People of the United States in favor of foreign nationals in our country ILLEGALLY!!

That is........Treason......aiding and abetting a foreign national that is violating federal law.....to come in here and undermine the security of the United States and the American People. If that's not Treason against the people of the United States from the federal bench, then I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE TERM TREASON MEANS!!