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Report: Tancredo Will Drop Out Tomorrow
Well, the nativist demagoguery was fun while it lasted. Tom Tancredo is expected to drop out of the presidential race tomorrow, two weeks to the day before the Iowa caucus. Tancredo had also indicated previously that he is not running for re-election to the House.
Tancredo had struggled to break through as a candidate in his own right, but he can probably take some satisfaction in seeing so many of the other candidates take a hard line on immigration, including those who had been more conciliatory in the past. As he said at the YouTube debate, "all I've heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo."
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Even though I'm a Democrat, I think Tancredo did a great thing by sounding the alarm on the connection between corporate greed and out of control illegal immigration, the suffering illegal immigration has inflicted on lower income Americans. I never detected the racism he was accused of and instead found an American deeply troubled by the lawlessness and fragmentation of our society.
December 19, 2007 5:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tancredo can safely drop out--he has been utterly successful in forcing all the GOP contenders, save McCain, to adopt Tancredoism as their guiding principle on the immigration issue.
At the next GOP Primary debate, maybe they'll rip a live illegal limb from limb on stage and have a disemboweling contest.
Tancredo's nativism is evident in that he wants to cease all immigration, legal or otherwise. Under the policies he proposes, his own ancestors would never have been able to come to this country.
December 19, 2007 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Al Gore has exactly the same position. Anyone who understands sustainability knows immigration is out of control and untenable. Maybe slowing down all immigration wouldn't be a bad thing. The U.S. will have a population of 1 billion by 2090 if current trends continue. Is that sustainable?
December 19, 2007 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
When Tancredo decided to not run for his House seat in 2008, he said something to the effect that he no longer needed to stay in Congress because he had succeeded in pushing his anti-immigration views into the national discourse.
That's pretty clear vindication for those of us who long claimed he was in Congress to push his own agenda, not to represent the people of Colorado's 6th district. As someone whom he failed to represent for many years, I say "adios" with a great sense of relief.
December 19, 2007 6:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can't wait until all the 6th and 7th tier candidates start folding...if it was obvious they didn't have a chance in hell six months ago it is outright painfully obvious now. You've all taken your opportunity to get on your soapboxes and increase your profile for the positions you were really interested in this whole time, so call it a day and clear off the stage..
But wait, wasn't it almost Tancredo's turn as frontrunner of the weak? I guess its over to...Brownback? Is he still alive?
December 19, 2007 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
If the in the US stays close to the current rate of 2.1, and all immigration stops, then the population should stay very static. Of course, if all immigration is stopped and emigration is still allowed, the US population will gradually shrink. But the influx of people, along with their cultures and ideas, is fairly central to the American experiment. Of course, fertility rates for non-immigrant Americans are lower than 2.1, similar to those in Europe. If that demographic detail holds up over time, eliminating immigration to the US would gradually diminish the total fertility rate, resulting in a diminishing population, which also seems like a problem (just ask Russia).
December 19, 2007 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
1990-2000
The dream of a stabilized — or even a stabilizing — population was proven to be nothing but a fairy tale as U.S. population exploded with its biggest growth ever. The Baby Boom peak was exceeded — not by a big increase in Americans' babies but because Congress further increased immigration to a level almost quadruple the traditional level. And federal decisions to stop enforcing most laws against illegal immigration in the interior of the country led to additional higher levels of illegal aliens in the country. Yet another cause of the boom was immigrant fertility. Although American natives maintained a below-replacement-level fertility rate, immigrant fertility was at a similar rate to the U.S. Baby Boom fertility of the 1950s.
http://numbersusa.com/overpopulation/decadegraph.html
December 19, 2007 6:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
What do I do now with all the VIVA TANCREDO bumper stickers I had printed?
December 20, 2007 12:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tancredo will throw whatever support he has to Romney. After Mitt agrees to "help" retire any of Toms campaign debt.
December 20, 2007 2:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here's a link for Willie Nelson Dem to help assist him in finding Tancredo's nativism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5GUCQAdlxg
Scour the whole video, it's got to be somewhere in there.
December 20, 2007 8:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
This isn't to say that you're wrong about Tancredo's campaigning. I was surprised at the debates to see that he understood the root causes of illegal immigration, such as NAFTA. But his positions are wrong.
December 20, 2007 8:18 AM | Reply | Permalink