Tancredo

23 December 2007 |permalink | email article

My candidate for worst person of the year in American politics is Republican presidential dropout Tom Tancredo.

The Colorado congressman had no shot at winning the nomination but his impact was predictable. On a single issue – illegal immigration – he has aggressively symbolized Republicans anew as the party of domestic fear and ethnic bigotry reaching back to Nixon’s old “Southern strategy.”

“I had no idea he could take one issue and, with it, help make the Republican presidential race – and the country itself – uglier, nastier and a more mean-spirited place to be,” writes Mike Littwin in the Rocky Mountain News.

Tancredo “didn’t do it by himself, of course. He wasn’t even the lead player. You have to give that role to Lou Dobbs and the huge audience on his team.”

Illegal immigration would have been an issue in the Republican primary even if Tancredo had never visited Iowa.

The seeds of fear were sown when John McCain, once the GOP frontrunner and is now trying for a dramatic comeback in New Hamphire after blowing his cash wad over the summer, put his name on a reform bill next to Ted Kennedy. 

Rudy Giuliani, who replaced McCain as the frontrunner but is now fading, fanned the flames when as mayor of New York he embraced illegal immigrants.

But Tancredo was uniquely positioned to demagogue the issue and the first to volunteer even though in the YouTube debate Mitt Romney accused Giuliani of running a sanctuary city and Giuliani accused Romney of running a sanctuary mansion.

Still, Tancredo managed to air a series of virulent campaign ads, the last spoofing fellow Republican candidates either wearing sombreros or showing up at presidential cock fights - presumably his warped idea of ethnic humor.

The congressman has now endorsed Romney, whom he once claimed “is not the man he claims to be,” in a desperate effort to stop Mike Huckabee in Iowa, who Tancredo claims is too soft on immigration.

It’s not surprising Romney failed to show up to acknowledge the endorsement at a poorly attended news conference.

The question to ponder is how seriously mean-spirited ethnic bigotry will impact on the 2008 general election.

 

 

 

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