New in PJ Media:
Old Joe Biden has done appalling damage to America, but he didn’t come out of nowhere: if you’ve ever wondered how things got so bad so quickly, the short answer is that they didn’t. The chaos, anti-Americanism, and authoritarianism of the Biden administration are the result of years of self-serving politicians of both parties looking to their own narrow interests rather than those of the American people.
On the other side, Donald Trump didn’t come out of nowhere either. During ten tumultuous years in Congress, a presidential campaign, and two campaigns for governor of Colorado, Tom Tancredo stood indefatigably for America-First principles before virtually anyone else dared to do so. The title of his new memoir, I Was Trump Before Trump was Cool, is as whimsical as it is accurate.
Take the border crisis (please). When Tancredo first arrived in Congress in 1999, he thought that other Congressional Republicans would join him in fighting against illegal immigration. He thought wrong. Tancredo recounts:
Shortly after I found out where the bathrooms were, I began to realize that on at least that one issue, immigration, I had no allies. I actually was surprised at that. I thought certainly that there would be other Republicans who would be willing to jump in on this particular fray, but that was not the case. There were people there who had talked about the subject once in a while and presented themselves as anti-illegal immigration. But in fact, there were none who wanted actually to step out farther than that on the issue. The reason was because the leadership opposed it, and the president opposed it. They both oppose any immigration reform, and when they oppose it, they appeal to two loyalties: your loyalty to the party and your desire to keep funds flowing into your reelection campaigns.
On one occasion, Tancredo got permission to show a House Republican caucus meeting a four-minute video of illegals crossing into the U.S. at Organ Pipe Cactus National Park in Arizona. “When we started the tape,” he recalls, “there were over 200 members sitting there in the caucus. When it ended four minutes later, there were half a dozen. All the rest had taken off, and did so boisterously saying, ‘Why the hell did you bring this into the caucus? It’s just a lot of trouble.’ So that was another learning curve that I had, in terms of how the issue was going to be accepted by my colleagues.” And remember, these were the Republicans.
Tancredo’s reminiscences evoke a vanished America: he tells of his grandfather, nine years old and unable to speak English, arriving in the United States with a note pinned to his shirt: “Please send me to Iowa,” to the home of his aunt. It took the boy two and a half years to travel from New York out West, and when he did, he overshot Iowa and ended up in Colorado, where he settled and where Tom Tancredo was born.
There is more. Read the rest here.
Infidel says
Tancredo was ‘Trump’ in the party during the Bush years, and got into a fight w/ Karl Rove over his refusal to embrace the open borders policy of the Bushes. I consider it a missed opportunity that Trump didn’t tap him for anything during his 4 years in office. To add to the tragedy: Tancredo is from Colorado – a state that has gone blue by the import of California’s drugees
The best part of Tancredo is that he was one of those rare politicians who was unafraid to criticize islam: the only others I have heard say that to any degree are Trump and Carson in 2016, and Marjorie Taylor Green in 2020, and Kathy Barnette some years ago. I really wish there were more like them
gravenimage says
Before Trump, There Was Tom Tancredo
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Good article from Hugh Fitzgerald.
Infidel says
No, it’s from RS
somehistory says
I recall Mr. Tancredo. An honest man. CO would be a different place now if he had control of the place. the mary jane, weed problem makes the heroin problem so much worse.
The boulders aren’t the only “stones.”
there are few honest people who run for office and even fewer win the office for which they run.
Money is the bottom line. Along with power, politicians eat, sleep and dream of the power that the money will bring them, and the more power, the more money. Corruption.
Too bad he was up against a wall of corruption.