The Subway Canaries

“Tancredo, of course, has claimed that his anti-immigration stances have “nothing to do with ethnicity or race.” Yet his proximity to his white nationalist admirers is closer than he publicly concedes. Perched in the rear of the Dulles Hyatt conference hall sipping a Diet Coke, Gordon Lee Baum, the leader of America’s largest white nationalist organization, the Council of Conservative Citizens, told me, “Tancredo’s pretty good. We’ve had him down a few times to meet with us.” Though Baum didn’t elaborate, another CCC member, California-based anti-immigrant doyenne Barbara Coe, spoke alongside Tancredo at a February 8 rally at the US Capitol in support of the Minutemen.

(To the chagrin of its planners, the rally was attended by two brown-shirted neo-Nazis from the National Socialist Movement who distributed fliers declaring, “Immigration is a race issue” until they were removed by Capitol Police.)

In the midterm election year of 2006 and looking forward to the presidential election of 2008, Tancredo has laid down his marker. If establishment GOP candidates stray from his line, he has threatened to enter the Republican presidential race himself to “force [illegal immigration] into the debate.” Just last month, Tancredo tested the waters (or made clear his threat) with a series of stump speeches in New Hampshire.

Already, a surprising array of Republican presidential contenders are emulating Tancredo. Senator George Allen of Virginia met privately with Tancredo in September to seek his blessing and advice. Tancredo said he came away mildly encouraged. In February, Republican Senate majority leader Bill Frist called for “physical or electronic barriers covering every inch of our 1,951-mile-long border with Mexico–a virtual fence.” And Republican Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, who infamously called decorated Vietnam vet Representative John Murtha a “coward” on the House floor, recently removed a claim from her campaign website that Tancredo had endorsed her after Tancredo’s office said it was false.

While the virulent but minuscule white nationalist movement struggles to find its bearings, certain conservative Republicans are adapting a nativist appeal to gain a broader following. They are applying Nick Griffin’s advice to attack “the enemy we can most easily defeat,” leaving overt anti-Semitism to the likes of David Duke. Meanwhile, they stoke fears of nonwhite immigrants, who Tancredo has said are “coming here to kill you and kill me and our families.” The far right has figured out its post-9/11, post-Bush strategy, and the Republican hopefuls of 2008 are already gravitating toward it. “

The way I judge people is through my friend Lindsey.  I think I’ve repeatedly mentioned that Lindsey is probably one of the the most decent and honorable men to ever serve in Washington.  When Tancredo disses him, that tells me all I need to know. 

He has been identified as the most zenophobic and ‘racist’ member of Congress by the ADL.  And, he personally sand-bagged GWB’s 2005 immigration reform.  Yep, you heard me correctly. 

And the SPLC is liberal, I know that -but we’re going for intellectual honesty here – and in the anti-illegal hystaria being whipped into a feeding frenzy by Tancredo and his compatriots, we are in great need of it. 

A 2005 New Republic profile of Tancredo.   And exposes Tancredo’s agenda in terms I have been using.  “…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…” 

“…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…”

A review of Tancredo’s role-model, Samuel Huntington’s book that has inspired Tancredo’s zenophobia.    And a Texas critique of the book that highlights the many mis-reprensations of the Hispanic culture. 

“Tanton and his groups also have close ties to Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), a leading supporter of stricter immigration rules, including a FAIR-supported five-year moratorium on many forms of legal immigration [The Washington Post, 3/25/05]. The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call described NumbersUSA legislative analyst Rosemary Jenks as “a close Tancredo ally in the immigration reform movement” [1/12/04]. A 2003 Salon.com article (written by Max Blumenthal, now a Media Matters research fellow) also noted Tancredo’s extensive connections to both Tanton and white nationalist activists:

Tancredo also enjoys star status among the white-collar anti-immigrationists of Tanton’s network who have courted his support, donating $5,000 to his 2002 campaign through FAIR’s U.S. Immigration Reform PAC and thousands more in personal donations. Leaders in Tanton’s network have long sought a foothold on Capitol Hill and, through Tancredo, it appears their hopes have been realized.

The close working relationship between the Tanton network and Tancredo is most apparent on the Web site for the congressman’s Immigration Reform Caucus. When Salon interviewed Tancredo earlier this year, the Web site contained links to FAIR, NumbersUSA, CIS and virtually every other Tanton creation. It also contained a link to VDare, a white nationalist Web site run by British writer Peter Brimelow that is named after Virginia Dare, the first white child born in the New World. When asked about the link, Tancredo was befuddled and indignant.

After the Salon.com article’s publication, Tancredo scrubbed all links to outside groups from the caucus’ website, though he wrote in a letter to Salon.com: “I had no reason to believe that this online magazine is anything but a legitimate contributor to the vast library of resources on this vital issue. After looking over Vdare’s recent work, I have not changed this opinion.”

At least one GOP Congressperson has suggested Tancredo recant his support of Gilchrist or be booted out of the party!