A Border War: Tom Tancredo is pulling the immigration debate to the right - and away from Bush
Tancredo may not be a household name yet, but he’s doing everything he can to change that. As the House and Senate debate the nation’s immigration and border-security laws, the four-term Coloradan has positioned himself as the loudest, angriest voice against the estimated 11 million illegal aliens now living in the United States. They are “a scourge that threatens the very future of our nation,” he says. He laments “the cult of multiculturalism,” and worries about America’s becoming a “Tower of Babel.” If Republican presidential candidates don’t put the problem atop the agenda in 2008, he says he’ll run himself, just to force the front runners to talk about it. Not that he thinks he’d win the White House. He declares himself “too fat, too short and too bald” to be president. If the Republicans lose the election because he’s too tough on the issue, he says, “So be it.”
There’s no doubt that former DUMB@$$ AWARD wiener Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) has the politics of being a complete asshole down to an art form. Tancredo, whose unspoken political credo is “Kill ‘em all; let God sort ‘em out”, is the sort of politician that makes people think that Republicans really are mean-spirited, joyless trolls. This would be due to the fact that Tancredo IS a mean-spirited, joyless troll who would gladly rip out the heart of a political opponent merely to watch it beat as his opponent expired.
Tancredo, who if not for his “burn all illegal aliens” (metaphorically speaking) shtick would be a thoroughly insiginificant and forgettable despot, is fast becoming one of the darlings of the slash-and-burn wing of the Republican Party. You know the type; the “take-no-prisoners-show-no-mercy” Republican who think that all Liberal Democrats and non-Christians should be sent off to re-education camps. Tancredo has managed to tap into a growing groundswell of anger among these zealots when it comes to the issue of immigration. Yes, clearly Tancredo is no fan of brown people, particularly those who happen to be in this country illegally. And he will stop at nothing to make certain that he’s heard and immigration becomes a major issue.
Tancredo may not be a household name yet, but he’s doing everything he can to change that. As the House and Senate debate the nation’s immigration and border-security laws, the four-term Coloradan has positioned himself as the loudest, angriest voice against the estimated 11 million illegal aliens now living in the United States. They are “a scourge that threatens the very future of our nation,” he says. He laments “the cult of multiculturalism,” and worries about America’s becoming a “Tower of Babel.” If Republican presidential candidates don’t put the problem atop the agenda in 2008, he says he’ll run himself, just to force the front runners to talk about it. Not that he thinks he’d win the White House. He declares himself “too fat, too short and too bald” to be president. If the Republicans lose the election because he’s too tough on the issue, he says, “So be it.”
Not so long ago, Tancredo was regarded as little more than a noisy pest on Capitol Hill. His colleagues shook their heads at his tireless demands for crackdowns on American employers who hire illegals and his idea for a 700-mile-long fence along the Mexican border. But in recent months, some of those same Republicans have come to realize that, while Tancredo may be a crank, he is a crank with a large and passionate following. Anti-immigration sentiment has always simmered, and it flares up about once a decade—the last time it hit this level was 1996, when California Gov. Pete Wilson made it the centerpiece of his failed presidential campaign. Tancredo was one of the first politicians to tap into the latest surge of anger.
It’s the usual argument. Places with large numbers of undocumented workers place a strain on public resources: education, health care, welfare budgets. Republicans decry these abuses, though they are quite happy to have these same folks mow their lawns, clean their houses, and pick up their garbage. They want and depend on the services provided by brown people, some of whom may or may not be of questionable immigration status, but then they want them to disappear. There is just one thing wrong with this attitude: these are not invisible people that Tancredo is so eager to demonize. These are human beings with hopes and dreams and families, and they deserve to be treated with the same dignity and humanity that we demand for ourselves.
Tancredo’s anti-immigration campaign is also brazenly, almost gleefully, taking aim at George W. Bush and Karl Rove. The president had once hoped the immigration debate would center on his proposed guest-worker program, which would allow illegals‚Äö√Ñ√Æwho fill millions of unskilled, low-wage jobs‚Äö√Ñ√Æto stay in the country for a set period of time. This was Bush the pragmatist, the former border-state governor who wanted to acknowledge the importance of immigrant labor to construction, fruit farming and other chunks of the U.S. economy. “He doesn’t think it’s morally right that a group that has been critical to the strength of the economy is operating in the shadows,” says a senior Bush aide who, following policy, spoke anonymously. Meanwhile, Rove pushed the pure political benefits of the plan: immigrant-friendly policies would help the party reach out to the fast-growing Latino vote.
In this instance, at least Our Glorious Leader is the reasonable one. Coming from a border state with a large Hispanic population, Our Glorious Leader at least recognizes that common human decency dictates that those who perform our menial tasks should not be forced to live in the shadows. Tancredo, though, is thoroughly unburdened by that same sense of human decency. He recognizes, and has managed to tap into, a growing anger against immigrants, illegal or otherwise.
Tancredo believes there’s greater danger in doing nothing. All he wants, he says, is to see the law enforced. “I don’t like it when people call me a racist or xenophobe,” he says. “In my heart, I know that I’m not.” A 60-year-old grandson of an Italian immigrant, he grew up in a working-class family. He ran for Congress on a whim in 1998, and won by pushing immigration reform…..
He’s remained unapologetic about his views. In 2002, The Denver Post ran a human-interest story about a high-school honors student who couldn’t get college financial aid because he was in the United States illegally. Tancredo tried to have the boy and his family deported. (He was unsuccessful.)
Tancredo may think that his heart’s in the right place, and he might even think that he’s doing the right thing by the country he loves. The truth, though, is that Tom Tancredo is just another mean-spirited Republican building his political reputation on the sandy foundation of hatred and bigotry. He may think that he has a tiger by the tail, but in the end, this tiger will swallow him. Hatred and bigotry has a way of doing that to the people who think they can harness it to their benefit.
