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ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politicsThese days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo Now, Tancredo (website), who has represented the state's Sixth District since 1999, has joined the long list of candidates contending for the GOP's 2008 presidential nomination. In mid-January Tancredo announced the formation of an exploratory committee -- Tom Tancredo for a Secure America -- the first step to formally declaring his candidacy. While his announcement didn't cause quite the stir as the announcement by Illinois Democratic Senator Barak Obama that he too was forming an exploratory committee, nevertheless Tancredo's move did not go completely unnoticed. While voters' concerns over the war in Iraq and the GOP's "culture of corruption" predominated in the 2006 midterms, Tancredo will be doing his best to make immigration an issue for the presidential campaign of 2008. Tancredo tosses his hat in the ringPreviously Tancredo had said that if others took up the immigration issue he would not become a candidate. "Unfortunately, no one in the top tier conveys a concern about this issue," Tancredo said at the time of his announcement. He was especially critical of Arizona Republican Senator John McCain -- who, along with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, are the GOP's early frontrunners -- for co-sponsoring guest-worker legislation with Senator Ted Kennedy that Tancredo called "the McKennedy bill." In a field bursting with conservative candidates, Tancredo will be counting on his anti-immigration credentials and ties to anti-immigrant organizations to win support from GOP primary voters. And if he can't win, he hopes to at least convince other GOP candidates to follow his lead on the immigration issue. According to the Des Moines Register's David Yepsin, Tancredo "could be a real factor in Iowa's leadoff 2008 caucuses." After all, as Yepson pointed out, such right wing stalwarts as Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Alan Keyes, Gary Bauer, and Steve Forbes all "ran strong caucus races in Iowa." And while they all lost, "they had an impact by forcing the leading candidates to speak to their issues -- and by energizing new people to get involved in the process." "While Tancredo has to be ranked as the longest of presidential long shots," Yepson noted, "he has the potential to pull the Republican field of candidates to the right, particularly on his signature issue of curbing illegal immigration." A spokesperson for the Washington, DC-based Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a longtime anti-immigration organization, "believes ...Tancredo will have the support of a lot of ordinary Americans now that he has officially announced his intention to form a 2008 Presidential exploratory committee," OneNewsNow, a Christian News Service sponsored by the American Family Association, recently reported. Susan Tully, national field director for FAIR, said that Tancredo "has a tremendous following," as "80 to 90 percent of Americans think illegal immigration is a problem." According to OneNewsNow, Tully "believes these concerned citizens will be pleased and excited over the congressman's plan to make immigration the campaign's 'number-one issue.'" Tully allowed that while Tancredo "will never have the money that the other candidates are going to have, and he's never going to have the party support ... he has the people's support, and it's going to take a grassroots effort." Credibility on social issues challengedTancredo has insisted that immigration is only one of many traditional family values issues that he is concerned about. According to the Des Moines Register, Tancredo "said he has a long record of support for pro-life and pro-family causes, opposition to gay marriage and fiscal discipline. 'I have a lot of credibility on those conservative principles. I don't see anybody at this time who puts all that together. It's more than just the immigration issue.'" A recent report in the American Spectator, however, directly challenged Tancredo's anti-abortion credentials. Written by someone calling himself "The Prowler," the story titled "Tancredo's Dubious Allies" maintains that the congressman has taken a substantial amount of money from pro-abortion contributors. A staffer for one of Tancredo's colleagues in the House of Representatives told "The Prowler" that Tancredo is "going to paint himself as a mainstream conservative. But the folks he's associating with are not part of the mainstream." According to the American Spectator, "campaign finance reports" show that "one of Tancredo's biggest financial backers has been the family of Dr. John Tanton, the founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform," and "one of the most prominent conservative financiers of Planned Parenthood in the United States, having helped found in the mid-1960s the first Planned Parenthood chapter in northern Michigan." Tancredo has "accepted more than $20,000 from the FAIR PAC and personal donations from Tanton between 1996 and 2006," the American Spectator reported. "Over the past ten years, according to Federal Election Commission reports, FAIR has provided more than $15,000 to Tancredo campaigns and PACs. Tanton has given Tancredo $7,000, while donating $28,000 to FAIR's political action arm." A consultant for a Republican House member from a western state told the conservative magazine that "Republicans and social conservatives need to be asking Tancredo some tough questions. I don't believe he's a pro-life candidate, not by a long shot, and the people he's associated with, who back him, are not part of the mainstream. To disavow these people now is just too late." Tancredo's Christian nationA Right Web profile described Tancredo as "a social conservative aligned with the Christian Right, [who] is also an enthusiastic supporter of the Bush administration's war on terror, including the Iraq War. A consistent supporter of the Pentagon and U.S. defense industries, Tancredo has become a leading spokesperson in the House for an Iran regime change." Tancredo started his political career in Colorado's House of Representatives in the late 1970s, "where he teamed up with other social conservatives and new right advocates--a group that then-Governor Dick Lamm called "House crazies"--to push for a number of socially conservative polices, including slashing taxes and cutting social services," Right Web pointed out. After serving two terms, Tancredo, a former junior high school history teacher in Denver, "was appointed in 1981 to head the regional office of the Department of Education in the Reagan administration." Four years later he "distribute[d] to teachers a speech by a former colleague that called for a 'truly Christian educational system' and bemoaned the 'godlessness' in a country founded as a 'Christian nation.' Despite the ensuing controversy, Tancredo kept his position and was reappointed by President George H. W. Bush in 1989." From 1993 to 1998, Tancredo served as president of the Independence Institute (website), described by Right Web as a Golden, Colorado-based "right-wing think tank .... [that] weighs in on an array of state issues, including government spending, education policy, and social issues. Its Board of Trustees includes Jeff Coors of Coors Brewing, a philanthropist involved in right-wing foundations established by the Coors family, including Castle Rock Foundation." Five months after coming to Washington, Tancredo formed the House Immigration Reform Caucus whose mission statement says that "The caucus gives members an opportunity to address the strong concerns about immigration that constituents have relayed to them. It also exists as an outlet for members and staff to discuss how current laws and regulation pose a threat to the security of America." (For more on the Immigration Reform Caucus see here.) Raising his national profileOver the Memorial Day weekend in 2005, Tancredo delivered the keynote address to about 400 attendees at an anti-immigration confab in Las Vegas. According to a report by Leonard Zeskind, the author of a forthcoming book on the history of the white nationalist movement for Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Tancredo is a "ubiquitous presence" at anti-immigration "rallies and meetings." To Tancredo, California's Proposition 187 was the "primal scream of the people of California," which he described as being under "political, economic, and cultural siege," Zeskind reported. He also pointed out, in his November 2005 piece for the American Prospect magazine titled "The New Nativism", that "Tancredo trades on his role as a Capitol Hill insider to enhance his standing in a far-flung movement. And in Congress his reputation far exceeds his backbencher status, precisely because of his standing among angry Middle Americans. "In Las Vegas, Tancredo was alternately humble and proud, comic and serious. He distanced himself from President Bush with a quip about the Minutemen's border watch the previous April. 'The same day the president was calling them vigilantes, I was in Arizona calling them heroes,' he gloated." In his extensive profile of Tancredo, and his ties to the anti-immigration movement, Zeskind maintained that the Colorado congressman "epitomizes an ominous overlap between seemingly respectable Republican anti-immigration activists and the white nationalist movement." Zeskind pointed out how Tancredo's immigration caucus had grown to more than 90 members, and how "it promotes legislation to reduce legal immigration, plug the borders, and, in its own words, 'address the widespread problem of voting by illegal aliens.' It also seeks to pass legislation denying citizenship to children born in the United States if their parents are undocumented residents. This goal is explicitly contradicted by the Constitution, which declares that any person born in the United States is a citizen." On a somewhat prescient note, Zeskind allowed that Tancredo"could well run in the 2008 presidential primaries." He had already made visits to New Hampshire and Iowa, where "he held three house party fund-raisers ...sponsored by local Christian Coalition activists." According to Zeskind, "Tancredo knows this constituency well, dating back to his days as a Colorado state legislator, and he has also spoken twice in Georgia at the Christian Coalition's annual conventions. His trip to Iowa was tightly managed by Bay Buchanan, and he seems to be following the path left by Bay's brother Pat in 1992 and '96." A recent Denver Post editorial noted that "According to a Tancredo aide, his state director for New Hampshire led the charge for Pat Buchanan in 1996 when he defeated Bob Dole in that state's primary." In addition, Tancredo's Team America (website) -- "a political action committee dedicated to securing our nation's borders" -- is chaired by Bay Buchanan. Team America's mission "is to make this issue a significant part of the national political debate and to identify, recruit, and help elect to public office individuals who are committed to enforcing our laws and securing our borders." Tancredo's new book "In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America's Border and Security," and Pat Buchanan's latest bestseller, "State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America" are both prominently featured at the Team America website. While Tancredo's campaign is a long-shot at best, "the temptation is to think that Tancredo's appeal is too narrow for the wide canvas of a presidential campaign," the Denver Post editorialized. "But those Pat Buchanan connections are a reminder that an insurgent effort can sometimes have a lingering half-life." One of the most significant things that could emerge from Tancredo's campaign "is the further advancement of the anti-immigration infrastructure," Devin Burghart pointed out. "Much as we saw with the campaign of Pat Robertson in 1988 -- which led to the launching of the Christian Coalition -- the Tancredo run has the potential to create a more extensive national anti-immigrant political operation." sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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