Someone sees Tom Tancredo for what he is...

Tancredo's Raw Truth About Terrorism
By Diana West
Friday, November 16, 2007

Somehow, it isn't fair that with illegal immigration now a defining issue of American politics, the one politician more than any other who has taught Americans to re-imagine their land as a nation with controllable borders is trailing in the GOP presidential polls. I refer, of course, to Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, whose congressional career has been guided by a once-seemingly impossible goal: to convince Americans that we had an illegal immigration problem.

This was something many Americans -- from the business community, with its addiction to cheap labor, to the great middle class, with its addiction to cheap childcare and household help -- all too readily denied.

If convincing people we had an illegal immigration crisis wasn't hard enough, he also had to persuade people there was a solution to this problem of porous borders that 10 or 20 million mainly Spanish-speaking illegal aliens had crossed -- and are still crossing. What are you gonna do, his detractors would say, build a fence?

Well, yes. That was one idea. And while that fence has yet to be built, it has been voted into law and signed by the president (despite his open-border self). In the course of the debate, Tancredo has helped many Americans once again think of the United States as a sovereign nation, not a honey pot -- a worthy testament to a congressional career that he will be bringing to an end by not seeking re-election.

But what about Tancredo's presidential campaign? This week, he debuted a new TV commercial challenging voters, as well as his fellow candidates, to link the illegal alien issue to the national security threat of jihadist terrorism. And despite this being the age of jihadist terrorism, Tancredo's TV spot is a first. It highlights the fact that our borders are open to more than just cheap labor by depicting the ease with which a terrorist enters a shopping mall -- like other terrorists entered the London Underground, the Spanish trains, a school in Russia -- to deposit a backpack-bomb that explodes at the end of the commercial. The message is refreshingly direct: "Tancredo. Before it's too late."

Yes, there is something surreal about the commercial, but not because of the content. What is surreal is the hysteria that has greeted it. After 9/11, 3/11, 7/7, Amman, Amsterdam, Baghdad, Bali, Beslan, Davao, Hadera, Haifa, Jakarta, Jerusalem, Nairobi, New Dehli, Sharm al-Sheik, Tel Aviv, Tunisia and more, what dolt doesn't wonder if and when jihadist cowards will attack our own trains, markets, hotels and restaurants? Tom Tancredo has only taken the mature and responsible course -- not coincidentally, also the politically incorrect course -- by raising this deadly serious issue with the American people. But for this he is castigated as a "fear-monger."

Indeed, as if on cue, the Tancredo-hostile Denver Post editorialized: "New Tancredo ad is a sad case of fear-mongering," adding that Tancredo had "reached a new low -- if that's possible."

"Is Tom Tancredo Too `Tough on Terror'?" blogged the Washington Post. Conclusion to reach: Way too tough.

The Los Angeles Times quoted one Dennis Goldford, a professor of politics at Drake University in Des Moines, who described the Tancredo commercial as "an incredibly fear-based kind of advertisement that some might say is trying to terrorize people into supporting his view." This is rich. Acknowledging terrorism as act of terrorism: Professor, grade yourself an "F."

Meanwhile, the Rocky Mountain News didn't claim even a shred of impartial coverage, sub-heading its report on the Tancredo commercial: "Expert says terrorism images are so blatant commercial won't work." The "expert" here was Bruce Gronbeck, a communications professor at the University of Iowa who teaches a course on politics on the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks (heaven help his students). He said: "This is just blatant, raw fear images, and they've never worked in the United States, period."

"Fear-mongering." "Terrorizing people." "Blatant, raw fear images." The way the "experts" talk, they make it sound as if Tancredo is subjecting citizens to sick "Saw" dismemberment fantasies -- not the plain, awful reality of our tragically jihad-diminished day. Yes, our shopping malls are targets. And yes, our borders are porous. Ignoring this makes it easier to live in a world of pretend, but that's not traditionally where our best presidents have come from. Indeed, how does any credible, responsible presidential candidate ignore the potential connection between shopping-mall targets and porous borders?

Answer: At this nation's politically correct peril.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DianaWest/2007/11/16/tancredos_raw_truth_about_terrorism

Tom Tancredo rips Bush

Tancredo slams Bush over immigration

By Kevin Landrigan

The Nashua Telegraph (NH),

September 25, 2007 http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articleAID=/20070925/NEWS08/309250087/-1/news08

Nashua -- Republican presidential candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo, of Colorado, said President Bush's failure to enforce existing immigration laws is 'despicable' and leading to a domestic crisis.

If elected, Tancredo, 61, said he'd ask Congress to require the withdrawal of Social Security taxes from all employee wages to make it easier for the federal government to track and deport illegal aliens.

'If we don't like our immigration laws, if we think they are wrong, repeal them. If we don't think they are wrong, enforce them,' Tancredo said during an interview with The Telegraph editorial board at Nashua High School South.

'Don't keep ignoring our laws, which this president has been doing, which is despicable,' Tancredo said.

To Tancredo, Bush's failure to crack down more on employers who employ undocumented workers and to maintain border security amounts to a high crime. 'If he could be impeached for dereliction of duty, a bill could be brought. Unfortunately, that is not grounds,' Tancredo said.

'He has avoided dealing with this issue to a point where we are at a crisis, I believe, and it is just unconscionable.' A six-term congressman, Tancredo said illegal immigration has become the centerpiece of his campaign, due to the role it's played in rising health-care costs, availability of jobs and crime.

'It is the most serious domestic policy we face, it has enormous ramifications for America, legal or illegal immigration, period, because of the lack of assimilation that has occurred,' Tancredo said.

Employers need to increase the wages of the low-skill jobs instead of hiring illegal immigrants, Tancredo said. He insisted the private economy cost for such a move would be lower than the costs of educating and caring for those who are here illegally.

Tancredo said an illegal alien serving in the military should be placed on a path to citizenship, but all other undocumented citizens must return to their former home. 'I have compassion for people who have done it the right way,' Tancredo said.

On Iraq, Tancredo said after this November, U.S. combat forces should disengage from serving as that country's police force and redeploy much of its troops elsewhere in the Middle East. 'I think we'll have to be in Iraq proper, in the oil fields. The numbers I don't know yet,' said Tancredo who serves on the House International Affairs Committee.

Tancredo defended his statement on a Florida radio talk show in 2005 when he favored 'taking out' Muslim holy sites if he learned fundamentalist extremists used nuclear weapons to attacks the U.S. 'What can you do to create a deterrent? I put this out there as a proposal,' said Tancredo, adding he's received death threats in response to it. 'You have to think what is motivating them . . . I think they are acting because of a religious interpretation they have of Islam.' Dave Burgess, of Hudson, a member of The Telegraph Reader Advisory Network, asked if the attacks against Iraq and Afghanistan were justified based on the terrorist attacks against the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, even though al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has not been captured. 'I think the response against the Taliban in Afghanistan was absolutely appropriate,' Tancredo responded. 'To call Iraq a response to 9-11 is inaccurate.'

A former junior high school teacher and federal education official, Tancredo said the U.S. role in public schools should be limited, the reason for his opposition to the federal No Child Left Behind law. Tancredo supports converting federal spending to education block grants for the state and taxpayer-financed vouchers that let parents pick the public, private or parochial school of their choice. 'I want to focus on the kid and not the system,' Tancredo added.

Consumers should be able to buy their own health insurance with the help of tax-free health savings accounts rather than get it primarily through their private employers, Tancredo said.

And he supports President Bush's threatened veto of the House-passed expansion of the Child Health Insurance Program for the states. After the interview, Tancredo spoke and then took questions from social studies students in the school auditorium.