Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado donned his bulletproof vest last year and hit the campaign trail expressly to get his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination - and the voters - to make illegal immigration a real, rather than rhetorical, priority.
He says he failed.
And he doesn't trust Democratic Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton or even presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain to do the right thing on immigration once one of them moves into the Oval Office.
"Nobody's going to enter the White House in January of '09 who is committed to securing the border and ending the disaster of illegal immigration," said Mr. Tancredo, who wears the vest when he feels insecure about the enemies he has made over the years while touting his anti-illegals stance.
"Therefore, the next stage in the battle is going to be in the states," he said.
So, Mr. Tancredo is leaving the halls of Congress to join the front lines, possibly with either a new or established advocacy group, and promote court-tested efforts states and localities have adopted to address the strain illegal immigration has put on the educational systems, social services and law enforcement.
"We will have to see if we can replicate Arizona and Oklahoma in other states because that's what states and localities do whenever the federal government walks away from its responsibility," said Mr. Tancredo, who is not seeking a sixth term.
Mr. Tancredo's distrust of Mr. McCain on questions such as amnesty for illegal immigrants - which each man interprets differently - is so deep that he is not sure he will vote for the presumptive Republican nominee in November.
"Maybe I'll write me in - who knows?" he said. "When I'm in the voting booth, I'm going to just be tussling with this in my own heart." ...
Mr. Tancredo said Mr. McCain is the last of 10 Republican presidential candidates standing because he and the other eight didn't provide the leadership voters desired.
"Frankly, I don't see myself as this great leader, as capable as Ronald Reagan," he said. "I know I'm not. So I can't ask people to see something in me that I don't see in myself." ....
Opponents who thought he had too much power over immigration policy were snarling "Nazi" and "racist" at him well before entered the Republican nomination battle.
By the Columbus Day Parade in Denver three years ago, epithets were the least of his worries.
He recalled a Denver plainclothes police officer saying, "Congressman, are you aware of the threats on your life here today?"
" 'More than usual?' " Mr. Tancredo asked.
The officer read aloud from his notebook what people were overhead saying about "whacking" Mr. Tancredo that day. More alarming, a parade-route sweep had turned up high-powered rifle ammo taped inside a trash can.
The officer suggested that Mr. Tancredo not ride atop a float but walk the parade route surrounded by eight policemen instead. Along the route, however, he recalled seeing a young woman holding up her baby's hand "and she has the baby flip me off."
After that day, the Capitol Police, whose job is to protect members of Congress while in Washington, began showing up now and then at Tancredo speeches across the country.
Eventually he bought a "really good" bulletproof vest on the Internet and wears it when he thinks he needs it.
Mr. Tancredo's decision to quit the presidential nomination race seemed right at the time.
He was in his hotel room at 11 p.m. on Dec. 20 when he saw former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a one-time advocate of giving sanctuary to illegals and the last of the candidates to adopt a border-security-first approach to the issue, promise in a spot commercial to secure the border and build a fence.
Mr. Tancredo immediately phoned campaign manager Bay Buchanan and said, "You can pull the plug on my campaign. The last domino just fell. Everybody's come the distance."
Since then, however, it is not clear whether the impact of Mr. Tancredo's 11-month presidential nomination campaign has left him as an immigration hero or zero.
"The issue has been elevated to a place it hadn't been before, but I will also be the first to admit, it has now begun to fall," he said. "I'm sorry if that's the result of my getting out of the race."
"I don't know that I have that much power over the issue," Mr. Tancredo said. "I don't know whether, if I had stayed in the race, it would still be up there at one or two, which is where it was. Now it's down to three or four. I just don't know."
Allow me to predict that the actual assassination threats against Tancredo (as opposed to the much fondled hypothetical ones against Obama) will generate very little interest. Similarly, the 2002 assassination of potential Dutch prime minister Pym Fortuyn by a Stuff White People Like pro-multiculturalist lawyer was greeted by the Great and Good with expressions boiling down to "He had it coming."
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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11 comments:
The infantilism of the left is perhaps best illustrated by the way they try to shout down, protest, and prevent speakers on the right. When was the last time you heard of protesters from the right trying to prevent a leftist speaker from delivering a speech?
One lesson here is that if you don't have the facts on your side, go with intimidation.
Somebody once said, war is God's way of making us learn geography.
Here's the deal with the US/Mexico border. It is too long, too big, too easy to cross. I know that right now the Mideast seems like "the" political hotspot. But a united South America is becoming a reality (despite massive racial divisions and the fact that there is NO East-West road from Brazil to Peru, for instance). WHEN (not if) South America comes of age and becomes our antagonist, we need a workable national unit.
That means we will need control of Mexico's southern border areas, which are a natural geographical border/boundary. Our navies can control the Gulf/Caribbean easily enough, but we need the right land border. Sonora will not do.
So all these hopes of kicking all the Mexicans out of the US for good only last as long as peace with South America. Seems far off, but war has a way of happening when you least expect it.
I imagine you've had some threats, no?
It's important to note that Pym Fortuyn didn't advocate deporting illegal immigrants (whoops, sorry, they're not illegal - no one is illegal - I meant to say "foreign criminals") from the Netherlands. He merely suggested greater efforts to keep new ones from coming, and better police protection. And, being executed by bullet to the head, body armor wouldn't have helped him.
The open-border invite-the-worlders know that once immigration reform becomes an accepted topic for discussion among the general public, immigration will be reformed. Simple as that. Fortuyn's rise in popularity showed that the public is willing to debate what the apparatchiks are not. Openborderites never proclaim that no country has a right to determine who comes in (and settles down and starts drawing welfare benefits), they only proclaim that North American and Northern European countries lack that right. Exceptionalism has a high price.
Ask an openborderite if it is okay for Japan or Yemen or Madagascar to have restrictions on immigration, or have an official language, or serve limited choices on school lunch menus. You probably won't get shot.
Mack Kinder,
Why would South America be our antagonist? South America becoming united is difficult enough to imagine (for example, my Peruvian friends hate Chileans and their market dominant minority ways), but why would they be our enemies?
We're natural trading partners and we're far enough apart that we don't get in each other's hair (South Americans in this country resent Mexicans-- the vast wave of Mexican illegals makes legal immigration tougher for everyone else).
Hell, if we promised close air support and naval gunfire, maybe we could get South America to invade and conquer Mexico.
Foreign occupation under martial law would be an improvement over the current Mexican system of government.
Tancredo has the right idea. Howard Jarvis did more good than Ronald Reagan did as Governor. As has the NRA, and various other groups.
As economic times get tough, and last longer, illegal immigrants are seen as wage destroyers and cause pressure. Pols respond to pressure, they do not lead. The amount of money needed to campaign and the settled, almost hereditary nature of the two parties prevent real leaders coming to the fore. Look at Arnold. He's terrible.
But even with terrible candidates and pols, an organization that can deliver masses amounts of votes, and take away money from candidates along with votes to punish them politically, will be heeded.
The NRA has done a great job of forcing Republicans to stand up for gun owners, and make Democrats pay the price politically for gun control. Jarvis led the way on rolling back taxes. There is no reason at all to suppose that Tancredo cannot do the same with illegal immigration.
Tancredo is a national treasure. responsible people most do everything they can to get him elected to the senate 2010, if he runs.
I'd think Tancredo, like Pim Fortuyn, would be much more likely to be assassinated by a white Leftist, or possibly by a middle class culturally white mixed-race person of partly Hispanic descent, than by a regular Hispanic outraged at his closed-border policy.
I think in Europe too, contrary to common belief it's largely the non-Islamic Left who are the most dangerous and the greater threat to civilisational survival. They killed Pim Fortuyn. They control the EU, now rapidly becoming a totalitarian state, and are in power in most European governments. They arrested and are currently persecuting the cartoonist Nekshott in the Netherlands for some very mild cartoons. They are the ones pushing for Shariaisation, far moreso than even the Muslim Brotherhood front organisations, never mind the bulk of European Muslims.
Perhaps the worst thing is that so many supposedly conservative and right-wing politicians are supporting this.
Beowulf, the Brazilians hate America at a grassroots level. It's Lula the Brazilian populist-dude that is organizing Unasur. South America is full of anti Uncle Sam propaganda.
Brazil today is energy independent. It looks like the Arabs are setting up to turn down their petrol spigots any time now, or at least sell very very high.
This is a long term thing, but it is very real. Much more real to American regional hegemony than pet projects like Darfur or Tibet.
Brazil today is energy independent. It looks like the Arabs are setting up to turn down their petrol spigots any time now, or at least sell very very high.
There are also some big racial divides in South America, and some big geographical divides. Again, there is literally no east-west road of any kind that connects the west coast (Peru) with the east coast (Brazil). To south Brazilians (that's most Brazilians), the Amazon might as well be the moon.
But all this stuff is literally in our back yard. Chavez is literally in our back yard, a stone's throw from Florida and Texas. I think the Bush camp already understands this and is thinking long term geopolitical strategery here.
We probably have to wait for the Mideast to really self-destruct (with our "help") before this comes into focus.
This man needs to be ended. He is a xenophobic maniac who supports a homicidal point of view, and garners support from the dim and the violent. It makes me quite ill that anyone can support this ball of inhuman slime.
If you feel like arguing, make sure that first your brain is getting oxygen. I can almost certainly assure you that it isn't.
Go bury your face in a bible and a gun-shop, and I can only wish that Tom Tancredo, as well as all his supporters, die as soon as possible before they cause any harm to the sentient members of society.
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