Analyzing Tom Tancredo on Tom Tancredo

By Thomas McDowell

Face the State published a very interesting column by Tom Tancredo explaining, without saying so, why he thinks his anti-immigration rhetoric didn’t hurt the Republican Party.

It was hard not to chuckle at Tancredo’s claim that John McCain ran an “inept” campaign. McCain won the Republican nomination. Tancredo couldn’t get above 2 percent in the polls and dropped out before the voting began. Who, exactly, ran the more inept campaign?

On to the business of Tancredo's column I am going to ignore the statistics that he provides because they are likely accurate and he presents them in a way that benefits his position.

What he doesn’t say is that Hispanics began turning against the Republican Party 20 years ago when Pete Wilson used an initiative campaign that Hispanics saw as anti-Hispanic to propel himself into the California governor’s seat.

In order to win an election, the Republican Party appeared to Hispanics to become their political persecutors. With the exception of a recall election, Republicans don’t win in statewide elections in California anymore, a factoid of some concern.

I am a WASP. You might think that a WASP would never have been a member of a politically persecuted class. You would be wrong. I’ve been a member of at least two politically persecuted classes. I am a gun owner and I am a retired Army officer.

In the period following Vietnam, the liberals hated the military. In three of the four years that Carter was President, the military got no pay raises, cost of living or otherwise.

As a battery commander for 15 months of that period, I got so little money for my unit that we ran short of toilet paper. I never considered spending my small budget for tool replacement. Toilet paper was a higher priority. Indeed, as my wife reminds me, I brought a personal roll of toilet paper from home…and I was the battery commander.

I was also in Korea for 13 months of that period. My Battalion had no money for heating oil for the barracks. To solve this problem the unit moved to the “field” for a month in the dead of winter where it could use training diesel fuel to heat tents. We didn’t train. We were only there to keep warm.

Soldiers were being mistreated by Congress and the President.

Democrats paid dearly for this mistreatment in 1980 when Ronald Reagan won and the Republicans won control of the Senate. Democrats know that soldiers don’t vote for them. Do you recall the lawyers doing high fives when soldier votes were being disqualified in Florida in 2000? Most people are too lazy to vote unless the opposing party provides motivation to get them to the polls. Democrats don’t despise the military any less that they ever did, but modern Democrats are less obvious in their disdain.

Tancredo can throw out all of the numbers he wants. The underlying fact is that he, and Pete Wilson before him, gave Hispanics a reason to despise Republicans in exactly the same way that the 1970-2000 Democrats made the military despise them, with the same results.

Tancredo would doubtless tell you he is not anti-Hispanic. He might have profited from a military race relations class I attended years ago: Appearance is reality.

The military didn’t go to the polls in this election because the Democrats have become smarter about military politics. The open disrespect is gone. Make no mistake, it is still there. They just hide it better.

We can hope that in future years poor Hispanics will become less incentivized to register and vote against Republicans as the memory of Tancredo’s agenda fades into the background. That is a goal we Republicans should work toward and strive to achieve. We should also strive to make Hispanics more prosperous. Prosperous voters have traditionally become Republicans.

Thomas McDowell of Colorado Springs writes political commentary for thecoloradoindex.com, and has written for several other blogs, including Schaffer v Udall as “a watcher.”