← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Howard Campbell, Jr.
Thread ID: 17523 | Posts: 14 | Started: 2005-03-26
2005-03-26 07:09 | User Profile
Any guy hated by Bush, Rove, Limbaugh, DeLay and Vincente Fox can't be all bad... :thumbsup:
Border War The New Republic ^ | March 17, 2005 | Michael Crowley
Posted on 03/19/2005 5:32:40 AM PST by billorites
For most Washington Republicans, a berating from Karl Rove is the stuff of nightmares. For Tom Tancredo, it was the best thing that ever happened to him. One morning in April 2002, the representative from Colorado was driving to work when his cell phone rang. It was Rove calling from the White House. The president's fabled strategist had just finished reading a Washington Times article in which Tancredo, whose political obsession is to limit both legal and illegal immigration into this country, had warned the Bush administration to treat border control more seriously. As usual, Tancredo had delivered his point in cunningly theatrical terms. "Unless we do something significant to control our borders, we're going to have another event with someone waltzing across the borders. Then the blood of the people killed will be on this administration and this Congress." The quote sent Rove into a hollering rage--"he was absolutely screaming," Tancredo says--that forced the representative to pull off the road for safety. Among other things, Tancredo says, Rove called him a "traitor," and, with an impressive literary flourish, warned him "never again to darken the doorstep of the White House."
A typical Republican would maintain a shamed silence about such an episode. Tancredo immediately began sharing it with anyone who would listen. He has since recounted the tale of Rove's call to a long list of newspapers, magazines, TV shows, and speaking audiences, including everyone from The Dallas Morning News to Newsweek; from Roll Call to msnbc. Front and center on Tancredo's website is a December Fox News clip in which he speaks proudly of the White House's dislike for him. "[Rove]'s chewed out everyone in this building," Tancredo tells me with a smile. "The other people just don't talk about it."
Tancredo understands that talking about it is not an embarrassment. It's an opportunity--a chance to focus attention on his pet issue. Tancredo, who represents conservative suburbs of Denver, is turning himself into the avatar of a resurgent anti-immigration wing of the Republican Party. Just as President Bush is working to soften the party's image on immigration and lift its standing among Latino voters, Tancredo and his allies are demanding American troops at the Mexican border and severe restrictions on legal immigration--while warning of a looming threat to "Western civilization" itself.
For Republicans like Tancredo, controlling immigration has become a fixation, one matched perhaps only by the zealotry of GOP tax-cutters like Grover Norquist. And, if that obsession leads to bitter fights with the president, so be it. Sitting in an armchair in a meeting room near the House floor recently, Tancredo--who, in person, exudes an almost preternatural calm--explained his strategy. "If you want some attention in this town," he says, "take on the president [of] your own party. All of a sudden, when I did it, I was on Fox [constantly]. They must have looked at the weekly schedule and said, 'A minute here, three minutes there, let's get Tancredo. He'll say something outrageous.'" He breaks into a wide smile. "And I try!"
Outrageousness seems to come effortlessly. When The Denver Post profiled an illegal immigrant high school student with a 3.9 grade point average, Tancredo tried to have the boy deported. During his reelection race last fall, he aired campaign ads that included images of devastation from the Beslan school massacre in Russia and in which he declared, "Am I supposed to ignore the possibility of something like this happening here? Not on your life!" In one recent speech to activists in Washington, D.C., Tancredo averred that the Chinese government is "trying to export people" as a "way of extending their hegemony."
This would be just a story about a rabidly self-promotional representative were it not for the signs that Tancredo is helping to whip up a new xenophobia on the GOP right, with both short-term and long-term implications. In the near term, Tancredo's crusade threatens to block the sweeping immigration reform that is one of Bush's biggest second-term initiatives. At the same time, he's already looking past this lame-duck president and toward the 2008 presidential campaign. Having recently visited New Hampshire--and with plans to tour Iowa this spring--Tancredo is determined to make his laments about "the cult of multiculturalism" a central issue in the 2008 Republican primaries, even if it means a quixotic single-issue candidacy of his own. If he succeeds, Tancredo could set back by decades Rove's dream of a pro-GOP Latino America. Just when Republicans thought they had exorcised the ghost of Pat Buchanan, he's back. And he knows all the cable bookers in town.
Of all the fault lines in today's GOP, few of them are as intense as the party's split over immigration. "No issue, not one, threatens to do more damage to the Republican coalition than immigration," wrote National Review's David Frum late last year. An issue that seemed of third-tier importance gained new resonance after the September 11 attacks put a fresh national security spin on old conservative arguments. Since the attacks, the House Immigration Reform Caucus, which Tancredo chairs, has jumped from 16 members to 72. Meanwhile, a sputtering economy appears to be fueling resentment toward low-wage immigrant workers. A November 2003 Pew poll found that 54 percent of Republicans agree "completely" that immigration needs to be tightened--a 16 percent spike over five years. (By January 2005, 77 percent of respondents in an ABC News poll said they wanted to see tougher measures to keep immigrants out of the country.)
Last year, the Republicans in Tancredo's caucus nearly managed to derail an intelligence reform bill with strong White House backing, risking severe embarrassment to the president. Bush briefly placated the anti-immigrant conservatives with promises of new border-enforcement measures. But now they're even madder. Bush's latest budget plan provides funding for just 210 of the 2,000 new border-patrol agents authorized in the intelligence reform bill, and Republicans have watched with disgust as Democrats have used the issue to bash the president. Particularly in light of recent intelligence reports that Al Qaeda considers the Mexican border a prime entry point into the United States, "[Bush] is setting up the administration to be attacked by Democrats as not being serious on immigration and homeland security," says Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Stein was appalled that, at an immigration subcommittee hearing, liberal Democrats "Maxine Waters, Loretta Sanchez, and Sheila Jackson Lee were all pounding away, sounding like they were laying the groundwork to nail the next major terror incident at the president's feet."
Fueled by such frustrations, Tancredo's immigration caucus is now gearing up for another big battle. House Republicans recently passed several provisions they weren't able to add to the intelligence reform bill--including ones making it harder for would-be immigrants to receive asylum and nearly impossible for illegal ones to obtain driver's licenses. Earlier this week, they attached the legislation to an Iraq war spending bill that the Senate--which is far more moderate on immigration issues--will be forced to consider.
That's not how the Senate or the White House wants things to play out. Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist are hoping to avoid a fight over the House's tough provisions, which have a punitive air, until they are ready to offer a more comprehensive reform plan based on Bush's guest worker proposal, which the White House likes to describe with phrases like "humane" and "compassionate." (Expect to hear more of that rhetoric when Bush meets with Mexican President Vicente Fox next week.) Bush's plan, which is strongly backed by a business community in need of cheap manual labor, would grant illegal immigrants a work permit lasting up to three years before they had to return home. But conservatives suspect Bush's plan is a Trojan horse that will lead to amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants. "[Bush] has said it's not a pass to a green card," says Steven Camarota of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies. "If he does that, talk-show hosts are going to tear him a new butt."
And so will Tom Tancredo. On his side is a sense of populist righteousness, which holds that only elite Washington opinion is blocking the sweeping immigration crackdown that the United States is waiting for. "On immigration, there's a fundamental divide in America," says Camarota. "It's not a left-right divide. It's a divide between public opinion and elite opinion."
Tancredo says that divide could be seen during Arizona's recent Proposition 200 initiative, which bars illegal aliens from public services like schools and health care. "The opposition to it was the entire political establishment in Arizona. Both parties, all members of Congress, the two senators, the governor, the papers. The proponents were outspent two-and-a-half to one by the opponents. And it passed." What's more, he adds with pride, "It passed with 47 percent of Hispanic votes."
Arizona, Tancredo contends, is representative of a similar disconnect on the national level between elite and public opinion on immigration. Just as important, perhaps, Tancredo says Arizona put the lie to the notion that Latinos will flee the Republican Party if it stands for tighter border control. The GOP still has bad memories of the fallout from California's 1994 Proposition 187 referendum, which denied illegal aliens government benefits and provoked a backlash among Latinos. To the extent it provides a counterexample to Proposition 187, Tancredo says, the Arizona vote was "absolutely seminal."
Although he's a popular figure among Republican House colleagues who appreciate his immigration crusade, Tancredo isn't exactly beloved on Capitol Hill. During the 2004 election, a political action committee he founded, Team America (which is chaired by Pat Buchanan's sister, Bay) funded primary opponents running against two of his pro-immigration GOP colleagues, Arizona's Jim Kolbe and Utah's Chris Cannon. Such fratricidal tactics are verboten within the GOP ranks, and bringing the subject up leads him to brag about another fierce dressing-down from another highly feared Republican. "Ooh, doggies!" he says. "[Tom] DeLay called me in and said, 'You're finished, kaput. You cannot think of making a career in this place!'" As with his Rove encounter, Tancredo seems to wear this as a badge of honor. "I'll never get a committee chair, I'll never be a subcommittee chairman, whip team member, cheering squad, I don't know, whatever the hell. I will never be any of those things."
But Tancredo clearly cares less about career advancement in the House than the advancement of his ideas. And that's not likely to be good news for the GOP. Politics is as much about atmospherics as policy. And, in that sense, GOP conservatives may not want Tom Tancredo to be their public face on immigration. A former schoolteacher and one-time head of a libertarian think tank in Golden, Colorado, Tancredo is prone to wandering away from the nuts-and-bolts questions of wages and border security into more abstract, and more politically perilous, theorizing.
"There's a broader and long-term goal here," Tancredo explains. It emerges that he is a disciple of Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington, who believes that the world is divided into competing civilizations and that the character of the United States is threatened by Latino immigration. "It's the Samuel Huntington perspective. Who are we? That's something we need to work on. America is wrestling with an identity crisis. Part of it is a result of what I call the 'cult of multiculturalism.' The idea that there is nothing--nothing--of value in Western civilization, that we have nothing to offer the world, that we have nothing to offer as a viable society, that everything we have is bad and ugly." He continues, "If we are truly in a clash of civilizations, if Samuel Huntington's right about that, which I happen to believe, then it is important for us to understand who we are. What does it mean to be part of Western civilization? Are there inherent values that are worth anyone's allegiance?" Though delivered with a softer edge, this sounds a lot like the Buchananite rhetoric that caused immense harm to the GOP's national image in the 1990s.
It seems more than possible that Tom Tancredo is headed into the same political trap. "You can get an awful lot of mileage from demagoguing this issue, because it gets you on TV a lot," says Cecilia Muñoz of the liberal Hispanic group National Council of La Raza. "It may be good for short-term political gain, but, in the long term, it's likely to be a disaster for the Republican Party. It's pretty hard to woo the Latino community if you're taking an anti-immigrant posture--especially an ugly one."
Not that Democrats mind. As the GOP fights itself, Democrats are staking out both the left and right flanks. Ted Kennedy is drafting his own guest-worker bill, even as Hillary Clinton stuns conservatives by declaring her "adamant" opposition to illegal immigration.
None of this seems to trouble Tancredo, who has plans to visit the 2008 primary battlegrounds of Iowa and South Carolina in the weeks ahead with a posse of reporters in tow. "I'd like to get a national debate on this," he says. But such a debate comes with personal as well as political risks. During his interview with me, Tancredo's press aide, Carlos Espinosa (yes, a Latino--"he makes me look tame as hell on this issue," Tancredo cracks) interrupts. He says the Capitol Police are ready for their meeting with Tancredo. "First show them the e-mail!" he tells Espinosa. Then he asks me to turn off my tape recorder. I can't report what he told me. Let's just say Tancredo has previously acknowledged receiving death threats from people who call him a racist and a bigot. Referring to his work in Congress, Tancredo had told me, "The only way I can survive here is to be as visible as I can possibly be." But visibility can be a mixed blessing.
2005-03-26 07:15 | User Profile
RimJob, Rove and Rush still have to sell 85% of Americans--and evidently the majority of FReakers--on the joys of squalid Thirdworldization... :D
TOPICS: News/Current Events KEYWORDS: ALIENS; BORDERS; DEMAGOGUE; HILLARY; IMMIGRATION; TANCREDO; TANCRETOIDS
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1 posted on 03/19/2005 5:32:41 AM PST by billorites [ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies ]
To: billorites I just don't understand why the GOP is so feakin blind on this issue.
This is stupid. The fedgov's ONLY real purpose in life is to protect the borders.
And these nitwits think that opening the flood gates is somehow a GOOD idea.
Hey, "W", get a grip! Take care of this business or Hillary and friends will!! What part of that don't you understand?
2 posted on 03/19/2005 5:55:52 AM PST by Al Gator [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: billorites The enemy of my enemy is my friend..which is why TNR give Tancredo the exposure..
3 posted on 03/19/2005 5:56:37 AM PST by ken5050 (The Dem party is as dead as the NHL) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: Al Gator Tancredo in 2008!
4 posted on 03/19/2005 6:01:47 AM PST by jackbenimble (Import the third world, become the third world) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]
To: billorites The National Council of La Raza is a non-govermental group for the UN. Keep that in mind when reading about this crap.
5 posted on 03/19/2005 6:02:49 AM PST by texastoo (a "has-been" Republican) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: billorites "Tancredo, who represents conservative suburbs of Denver, is turning himself into the avatar of a resurgent anti-immigration wing of the Republican Party." -Crowley Tancredo is not "anti-immigration" -- just anti-illegal immigration. The article was intended as a hit piece, with little stabs like "rabid" and "fixation" and "xenophobia." But Tancredo is right on this issue, and there will be hell to pay for the GOP if the next successful terrorists turn out to have waltzed across our unguarded border.
6 posted on 03/19/2005 6:05:48 AM PST by Always A Marine [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: billorites "Unless we do something significant to control our borders, we're going to have another event with someone waltzing across the borders. Then the blood of the people killed will be on this administration and this Congress." I applaud Representative Tancredo's efforts to shed light on this border situation, but with all due respect, it is very likely too late to lock the barn door. The horse was long ago stolen. The terrorists are very likey already here. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you........
7 posted on 03/19/2005 6:06:09 AM PST by Thermalseeker [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: billorites Of all the fault lines in today's GOP, few of them are as intense as the party's split over immigration.
Yep, the problem is that the pro-immigration side has most of the money, money partly derived from their exploitation of illicit labor which makes them part of a criminal enterprize.
Particularly in light of recent intelligence reports that Al Qaeda considers the Mexican border a prime entry point into the United States
But you cant tell the neocons that; they're too busy counting their money to listen.
And so will Tom Tancredo. On his side is a sense of populist righteousness, which holds that only elite Washington opinion is blocking the sweeping immigration crackdown that the United States is waiting for. "On immigration, there's a fundamental divide in America," says Camarota. "It's not a left-right divide. It's a divide between public opinion and elite opinion."
Tancredo is exactly right on that.
Tancredo says that divide could be seen during Arizona's recent Proposition 200 initiative, which bars illegal aliens from public services like schools and health care. "The opposition to it was the entire political establishment in Arizona. Both parties, all members of Congress, the two senators, the governor, the papers. The proponents were outspent two-and-a-half to one by the opponents. And it passed." What's more, he adds with pride, "It passed with 47 percent of Hispanic votes."
If you want tea-leaves, look at Arizona. As the criminal exploitation of illicit labor spreads into the Midwest and Northeast almost all working people will become outraged on this issue.
But Tancredo clearly cares less about career advancement in the House than the advancement of his ideas. And that's not likely to be good news for the GOP. Politics is as much about atmospherics as policy. And, in that sense, GOP conservatives may not want Tom Tancredo to be their public face on immigration. A former schoolteacher and one-time head of a libertarian think tank in Golden, Colorado, Tancredo is prone to wandering away from the nuts-and-bolts questions of wages and border security into more abstract, and more politically perilous, theorizing.
A man of intelligence and principle puts more fear into a politician than an IRS tax audit.
"You can get an awful lot of mileage from demagoguing this issue, because it gets you on TV a lot," says Cecilia Muñoz of the liberal Hispanic group National Council of La Raza. "It may be good for short-term political gain, but, in the long term, it's likely to be a disaster for the Republican Party. It's pretty hard to woo the Latino community if you're taking an anti-immigrant posture--especially an ugly one."
The National Council of la Raza (which means 'The Race' ie Hispanics as THE only race that should be on this continent if you read their earliest declarations never disavowed) is a deeply racist organization. It is a joke to read them damning anyone for racism.
8 posted on 03/19/2005 6:12:16 AM PST by JFK_Lib [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: Thermalseeker "I applaud Representative Tancredo's efforts to shed light on this border situation, but with all due respect, it is very likely too late to lock the barn door. The horse was long ago stolen. The terrorists are very likely already here. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you........" And when this happens, it will land squarely on the doorstep of the Republicans. If they don't wake up and get with the program, they are gonna get spanked in the midterms. It has always amazed me how the Republican Party can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Maybe they are best when in the minority.
9 posted on 03/19/2005 6:17:04 AM PST by Burf [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies ]
To: ken5050 So what you are saying is that the issue of illegal immigration and the resident criminal aliens is just a political issue for the purposes of dividing a constituency group? If that is the case then why do we have laws, the US Constitution, and the Presidential oath of office?
10 posted on 03/19/2005 6:18:47 AM PST by Final Authority [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies ]
To: Always A Marine "Tancredo is not "anti-immigration" -- just anti-illegal immigration" Exactly
11 posted on 03/19/2005 6:19:20 AM PST by nuconvert (No More Axis of Evil by Christmas ! TLR) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]
To: billorites Tancredo for President - 2008. This guy gets MY vote!
12 posted on 03/19/2005 6:20:43 AM PST by hillary's_fat_a** [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: Always A Marine (ignore the private mail, i hit private instead of post)
yep, i noticed that. the commie media and left are soooo good with their little labeling tacticts.
does anyone know, where does Tancredo stand on this National ID Bill, or ammendment now i guess. because if he is FOR that, i don't believe he is libertatian leaning at all. the National ID is not being hailed by the conservative/libertarian side like Ron Paul. this article makes it sound like Tancredo is for it..?
13 posted on 03/19/2005 6:24:00 AM PST by sdpatriot (remember waco and ruby ridge) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]
bump
14 posted on 03/19/2005 6:24:33 AM PST by foreverfree [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: Al Gator While Tancredo and the rest of the anti-Hispanic crowd spend all of their energy on controlling the southern border - under the guise of "protecting the citizens of the US" - how many Terrorists will sneak across the northern border?
The border with Mexico runs a little under 2000 miles. The border with Canada runs nearly 4000 miles, and contains much better geography/flora and fauna for sneaking across.
Additionally - what about the nearly 13 THOUSAND miles of unprotected coastline?
15 posted on 03/19/2005 6:31:11 AM PST by The Coopster [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]
To: The Coopster "While Tancredo and the rest of the anti-Hispanic crowd ...bla, bla, bla..."
Pointless tripe.
He is anti-illegal trespasser.
Get over it.
16 posted on 03/19/2005 6:42:41 AM PST by taxed2death (A few billion here, a few trillion there...we're all friends right?) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies ]
To: Always A Marine Tancredo is not "anti-immigration" -- just anti-illegal immigration. The article was intended as a hit piece, with little stabs like "rabid" and "fixation" and "xenophobia." But Tancredo is right on this issue, and there will be hell to pay for the GOP if the next successful terrorists turn out to have waltzed across our unguarded border.
I'm more than a little happy to hear he is not anti-immigration. My wife is an immigrant from Russia, and on March 8 she passed her citizenship test with a perfect score. She went around for three months prior to the test saying, "Just give me liberty or give me death." That said, we do need legal immigrants to replace the 44 million Americans murdered by abortion. However, I am convinced we need the type of immigrants who made this country what it is today. Multiculturalism is going to be the death of the US, and hopefully there is a way to put a stop it.
17 posted on 03/19/2005 6:45:33 AM PST by GarySpFc (Sneakypete, De Oppresso Liber) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]
To: billorites It's just great to hear of one of my Libertarian brothers waking up to the immigration issue. Open borders, not drug legalization is the truly idiotic position of the Libertarian party.
18 posted on 03/19/2005 6:46:07 AM PST by hellbilly ("The law is an ass." Charles Dickens) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: billorites Rove called him a "traitor," ... That shoe doesn't fit....Tancredo.
19 posted on 03/19/2005 6:47:55 AM PST by JesseHousman (Execute Mumia Abu-Jamal Today) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: Al Gator I don't understand either why the government won't enforce the laws regarding illegal aliens. They pose a far greater danger than Iraq. It can only be becuase of one or more of the following: vested personal interests; bribery or blackmail; they are sleeper agents or supporters of terrorists and drug cartels; hatred for this country; wanting to change the US into a Third World nation; mental illness.
20 posted on 03/19/2005 6:51:36 AM PST by Dante3 [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]
To: billorites "[Rove]'s chewed out everyone in this building,"
Me thinks Bush is going to have a rough second term, even if he triangulates. What goes around comes around.
If you think GWB is a poor excuse for a conservative now, he's going to look much worse when he starts triangulating, like Clinton did. IMO
21 posted on 03/19/2005 6:52:27 AM PST by Finalapproach29er (Open borders=National suicide) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: taxed2death Ok then - what's his plan for the other 7/8 of border/coastline? Or does it even matter to you?
22 posted on 03/19/2005 6:53:13 AM PST by The Coopster [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies ]
To: Final Authority The New Republic is a left of center liberal magazine...they detest Bush..anything that can hurt the GOP they publicize..i.e. the split in the GOP..
23 posted on 03/19/2005 7:05:31 AM PST by ken5050 (The Dem party is as dead as the NHL) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies ]
To: The Coopster While Tancredo and the rest of the anti-Hispanic crowd spend all of their energy on controlling the southern border I can only assume from your post that you leave your house door open 24/7 for everyone, whether you know them or not, to come and go as they like, take what they want or leave what they want?
24 posted on 03/19/2005 7:10:18 AM PST by sure_fine (not one to over kill the thought process) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies ]
To: Final Authority
If that is the case then why do we have laws, the US Constitution, and the Presidential oath of office?<<
In the case of the current Administration, to be ignored.
25 posted on 03/19/2005 7:11:59 AM PST by B4Ranch (The Minutemen will be doing a 30 day Neighborhood Watch Program in Cochise County, Arizona.) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies ]
To: The Coopster
While Tancredo and the rest of the anti-Hispanic crowd spend all of their energy on controlling the southern border - under the guise of "protecting the citizens of the US" - how many Terrorists will sneak across the northern border?<<
You need to ask that question of the man in the White House who decided 210 BP agents would suffice instead of the 2000 he promised.
26 posted on 03/19/2005 7:14:52 AM PST by B4Ranch (The Minutemen will be doing a 30 day Neighborhood Watch Program in Cochise County, Arizona.) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies ]
To: billorites Carl Rove is completely out of phase with the majority of Americans when it comes to this wetback problem. It almost makes one think he might have a financial interest in promoting illegal immigration. No doubt the President values his judgement since he has publicly said so but they both are dead wrong on this issue.
They may gain a few Latino votes by their stand but Tancredo is the hero on this subject and the Republican Party will suffer unless our borders are closed and all illegals are deported.
Enforcing the law seems to be a thing of the past when it pertains to illegals.
27 posted on 03/19/2005 7:16:48 AM PST by hgro [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: jackbenimble I would vote for him. WITHOUT QUESTION!
28 posted on 03/19/2005 7:27:32 AM PST by B58Hustler [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies ]
To: sure_fine; All Nope. AND - since you're flailing around, trying for a metaphor - I don't lock one door, and leave the other open 24/7, either.
All of you are missing my point. If a person is truly concerned about terrorists sneaking in - how can you realistically concentrate on one border, and ignore the others?
Answer: You can't.
29 posted on 03/19/2005 7:30:26 AM PST by The Coopster [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies ]
To: Thermalseeker I think you said it is too late. I say that it is never too late.
One million this month, two million next month and three million the following month (and so on). It has to stop sometime. It is a problem now, but the problem grows bigger each day it is not controlled.
If one's horse is stolen, shouldn't one try to catch the horse thief and make the horse thief pay for the dastardly deed?
30 posted on 03/19/2005 7:35:20 AM PST by B58Hustler [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies ]
To: Always A Marine Xenophon was a great and brilliant man. If the Greeks had listened to him they might have survived.
If AQ crosses the border and bombs a city, those at the top should hang for it.
31 posted on 03/19/2005 7:38:06 AM PST by the [email]gillman@blacklagoon.com[/email] [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]
To: B4Ranch Hmmmmm.....20 thousand plus miles of border and coastline.....
.....2000 BP agents would mean one per 1000 linear miles of border....maybe it's about not throwing money down a hole. That money would be better spent developing/installing technology that would help monitor the borders - which is about as close to "sealing the borders" as you will be able to get. We can't build a big wall, after all.....and besides, that technology is outdated as well.
32 posted on 03/19/2005 7:40:23 AM PST by The Coopster [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies ]
To: The Coopster How many illegal are in the US today? These agents could certainly be doing something usefull for America.
33 posted on 03/19/2005 8:05:51 AM PST by B4Ranch (The Minutemen will be doing a 30 day Neighborhood Watch Program in Cochise County, Arizona.) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies ]
To: B4Ranch They're called Border Agents for a reason - they wouldn't be able to do squat for the illegals that are already working here.
Or are you saying that all illegals just mill around/work at the border?
BP and CIS are two totally different entities.
34 posted on 03/19/2005 8:14:58 AM PST by The Coopster [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies ]
To: The Coopster If I feel a need to call a race-baiter to another thread, I'll ping you.
Until then, adios amigo.
You've been "outed" one more time here on FR.
35 posted on 03/19/2005 8:19:32 AM PST by taxed2death (A few billion here, a few trillion there...we're all friends right?) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies ]
To: taxed2death And if I feel a need to ping a liar/slanderer, I'll let you know.
You don't know me from Adam. And if you want to concentrate on 2000 miles of a 20 thousand mile border - then thats fine. the folks who are really concerned about terror will concentrate on the big picture.
36 posted on 03/19/2005 8:23:00 AM PST by The Coopster [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies ]
To: The Coopster What used to be INS is now something else. I think ICE put the INS and the border patrol under the same headquarters.
[url]http://www.americanborderpatrol.com/[/url]
37 posted on 03/19/2005 8:23:01 AM PST by B4Ranch (The Minutemen will be doing a 30 day Neighborhood Watch Program in Cochise County, Arizona.) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies ]
To: B4Ranch It's called CIS now.
38 posted on 03/19/2005 8:23:42 AM PST by The Coopster [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies ]
To: Always A Marine Tancredo is not "anti-immigration" -- just anti-illegal immigration. Agreed, seeing that the Hon. Tom Tancredo is in favor of a guest worker program, he's another FROBL. But this statement raises a big red flag:
The character of the United States has been threatened and damaged terribly by the past 40 years of moral-liberalism, but we never hear Tom wailing about that actual harm day in and day out.
39 posted on 03/19/2005 8:28:36 AM PST by Cultural Jihad [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]
To: Al Gator I voted for GW under the assumption that he would take a firm position on illegal immigration,but quite frankly i think his "guest worker" program is a farce.We need someone in the White House with the b@lls stand up to the liberal dems,and PC republicans like Rove.Illegal immigration is destroying this country from the inside out.I don't know much about Tancredo,but i admire his guts.If Tancredo ran for president would he get any support from mainstream republicans?Any feedback?
40 posted on 03/19/2005 8:29:26 AM PST by thombo [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]
To: The Coopster All of you are missing my point. If a person is truly concerned about terrorists sneaking in - how can you realistically concentrate on one border, and ignore the others? Nobody said anything about "ignoring" portions of our borders. However, commonsense dictates that we allocate greater resources to those areas where border violations are more numerous.
41 posted on 03/19/2005 8:36:40 AM PST by Willie Green (Go Pat Go!!!) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies ]
To: Cultural Jihad; Always A Marine ""The character of the United States has been threatened and damaged terribly by the past 40 years of moral-liberalism, but we never hear Tom wailing about that actual harm day in and day out."
I find it interesting (and disturbing) how the Tancretoids will attack Walmart for using "illegal immigrant" labor, yet their friend Tom gets a pass when he uses the same type of folks to renovate his Colorado mansion.
[url]http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E53%257E867981%257E,00.html[/url]
42 posted on 03/19/2005 8:49:09 AM PST by ClintonBeGone (In politics, sometimes it's OK for even a Wolverine to root for a Buckeye win.) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies ]
To: billorites A typical Republican would maintain a shamed silence about such an episode. Tancredo immediately began sharing it with anyone who would listen. He has since recounted the tale of Rove's call to a long list of newspapers, magazines, TV shows, and speaking audiences, including everyone from The Dallas Morning News to Newsweek; from Roll Call to msnbc. Front and center on Tancredo's website is a December Fox News clip in which he speaks proudly of the White House's dislike for him. "[Rove]'s chewed out everyone in this building," Tancredo tells me with a smile. "The other people just don't talk about it."
The problem is that Tancredo and his followers are not republicans, nor are they conservatives.
43 posted on 03/19/2005 8:50:44 AM PST by ClintonBeGone (In politics, sometimes it's OK for even a Wolverine to root for a Buckeye win.) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: Willie Green Fair enough.
Where again did the 9-11 hijackers cross?
44 posted on 03/19/2005 8:52:00 AM PST by The Coopster [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies ]
To: Cultural Jihad Might millions of unassimilating foreigners settling in your country be seen as a form of 'cultural jihad'?
45 posted on 03/19/2005 9:00:12 AM PST by budwiesest (As California goes, so goes the whole enchilada.) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies ]
To: The Coopster Where again did the 9-11 hijackers cross? Study: Since 1993, almost every means of immigration exploited
46 posted on 03/19/2005 9:09:53 AM PST by Willie Green (Go Pat Go!!!) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 44 | View Replies ]
To: The Coopster "how can you realistically concentrate on one border, and ignore the others?"
How about we START with the southern border and go from there? You seem to be saying that if we can't do it all at once, we shouldn't do anything at all. If we start by closing the southern border - you know, the one that has millions of crimminal invaders flowing across it each and every year - THEN maybe we can worry about the northern one.
47 posted on 03/19/2005 9:11:13 AM PST by Pete98 (After his defeat by the Son of God, Satan changed his name to Allah and started over.) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies ]
To: Pete98 I am not sure that the biggest problem is border control. It seems to me that we do not have good procedures or enough facilities to process detainees once they are picked up. Apparently, half of the illegals in the country have been ordered deported but they didn't leave.
48 posted on 03/19/2005 10:06:27 AM PST by ClaireSolt (.) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies ]
To: ken5050 But when your own guy is shooting himself in the foot, and shooting the feet off all his own gang, you HAVE to hook him up on it.
To not do so is blind loyalty. Emphasis on blind. And blindness in politics can kill you.
49 posted on 03/20/2005 4:40:29 AM PST by Al Gator [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies ]
To: ClaireSolt Apparently, half of the illegals in the country have been ordered deported but they didn't leave. I agree that our procedures and facilities for detaining and deporting illegals need major work. But there are only about 400,000 absconders. That is a lot but no where close to half of the 10 to 20 million illegals.
If we did a better job enforcing our borders and our interior the problems would diminish. Our current lax enforcement is an invitation to break the law.
50 posted on 03/21/2005 7:02:07 AM PST by jackbenimble (Import the third world, become the third world) [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies ]
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2005-03-26 08:27 | User Profile
Tancredo is the most valuable representative in the House. His late night presentations on the floor of the House on C-Span are great.
2005-03-26 12:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Howard Campbell, Jr.]This would be just a story about a rabidly self-promotional representative were it not for the signs that Tancredo is helping to whip up a new xenophobia on the GOP right, with both short-term and long-term implications. In the near term, Tancredo's crusade threatens to block the sweeping immigration reform that is one of Bush's biggest second-term initiatives. At the same time, he's already looking past this lame-duck president and toward the 2008 presidential campaign. Having recently visited New Hampshire--and with plans to tour Iowa this spring--Tancredo is determined to make his laments about "the cult of multiculturalism" a central issue in the 2008 Republican primaries, even if it means a quixotic single-issue candidacy of his own.
TANCREDO in 2008!
2005-03-26 13:52 | User Profile
Tancredo, though far from perfect on the immigration invasion issue, is all we've got so far. I guess he'll do--for now.
Incidentally, most of the responses from the FReepers don't seem so bad to me. There are some really critical comments there that seem to have made it past the censors.
2005-03-26 14:24 | User Profile
S,
"For now" is the key term. RimJob will write their names down and gradually remove them over a period of time. He's still smarting over that Gheen column. I'm surprised that "Willie Green" is still there. He was a big Buchanan supporter back in 2000. RimJob removed most of them immediately following the election.
2005-03-26 15:18 | User Profile
I hope Mr. Tancredo runs for president. I think he will cause a sensation and then be smashed in pretty much the same way Pat Buchanan was. However, its important to try to keep anti-immigration ideas alive in the public square and he will be performing a valuble public service.
2005-03-26 17:29 | User Profile
Whites need their candidate, however small votes he'd get. Someone respectable, and with no punches pulled about immigration and America being a white Christian country. Just pull the facts out there on televitz.
2005-03-27 01:39 | User Profile
[img]http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/parodies/signs_of_the_times.jpg[/img]
2005-03-27 02:10 | User Profile
[img]http://www.stoptheinvasion.com/images/contact%20sheet/newaztlan.gif[/img]
2005-03-27 03:06 | User Profile
...If he succeeds, Tancredo could set back by decades Rove's dream of a pro-GOP Latino America. Just when Republicans thought they had exorcised the ghost of Pat Buchanan, he's back. And he knows all the cable bookers in town.
hmm, interesting!
2005-03-27 03:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE=JoseyWales]hmm, interesting![/QUOTE]Yes, I think that answers the question [URL=http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/report.php?p=92936]Would We Be More Politically Effective Workng For Immigration Reform Within the Republican Party [/URL]
If Tancredo succeeds, I think the answer undoubtedly is yes. Even if he just ends up splitting the Part, for our purposes, that's got to be a yes too.
Just > setting back by decades Rove's dream of a pro-GOP (and thoroughly neutered, one-world, PC) Latino America. is I think a goal worthy of support, even if that's all we accomplished.
Got to say - Tancredo is starting to get people's attention. He's really got the establishment looking for clever ways to spin him and start to carcicature him. E.g. he's pugnacious, like Buchanan. We definitely need a way to start helping him.
2005-03-28 05:41 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]S,
"For now" is the key term. RimJob will write their names down and gradually remove them over a period of time. He's still smarting over that Gheen column. I'm surprised that "Willie Green" is still there. He was a big Buchanan supporter back in 2000. RimJob removed most of them immediately following the election.[/QUOTE]
You've got RimJob's M.O. down, Sarge...
2005-03-29 07:47 | User Profile
Keep in mind that the map underrepresents the invaders. There are a lot of L'Teenos in the northeast also. The Negroes and the Spics are setting up their gangs and the shootings have been increasing despite the denials of gang activity by the Negro police chief in a nearby town.