posted: November 13, 2007 3:19 EST
His campaign down the tubes, the feeble presidential candidate finally hits YouTube with a shock-and-awe ad.
By Michael Roberts, Westword (Denver)
To paraphrase Dick Cheney, Rep. Tom Tancredo's quizzical presidential campaign is in its last throes. But it's going out with a bang -- literally -- with a commercial running in Iowa that makes Lyndon Johnson's infamous 1964 mushroom-cloud spot look subtle.
The ad (click here) begins with Tancredo offering an endorsement of the message that follows: "Hi, I'm Tom Tancredo, and I approve this message because someone needs to say it." An instant later, the screen fills with overtly scary, often overexposed images of a hooded man placing a bomb in a book bag and heading to a mall. Meanwhile, a narrator who bears a striking aural resemblance to Boris Karloff in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas declares: "There are consequences to open borders beyond the twenty million aliens who've come to take our jobs. Islamic terrorists now freely roam U.S. soil." Next, he adds, "Jihadists who froth with hate here to do as they have in London and Spain and Russia," with the locations in question punctuated by shots of a blasted bus, a destroyed train and a lifeless, bloodied young boy. Then it's back to the mall, and once the voice intones, "The price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill," we see the figure set down the book bag just prior to a fade to black and the sound of an explosion. The final graphic reads: "Tancredo... before it's too late."
Over the top? Oh man -- but it's also very much in keeping with Tancredo's true-believer style, which is analyzed in Westword's 2003 profile. During his early days as a Colorado state representative, Tancredo was known as one of the "House crazies." Iowans who see his latest commercial may well revive the nickname.
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posted: August 16, 2007 10:12 EST
Republican candidates pander to baseless base in Iowa.
By Marc Cooper, LA Weekly
Des Moines, Iowa — When you start reporting on presidential campaigns, you notice occasional pivotal moments, veritable epiphanies, when everything suddenly snaps into place. I remember, for example, attending the 1992 Republican Convention in Houston, fireworks booming over the press bleachers, while Pat Buchanan thunderously delivered his now infamous culture-war speech, vowing to "take back America block by block, street by street, house by house." As the crowd mightily roared its approval, I realized right there that poor Poppy Bush didn't stand a chance of re-election. The Republicans had completely misjudged the national mood. They wanted Kulturkampf when, in fact, it was all about the economy, stupid.
I had the same sort of realization this weekend while attending the circuslike GOP Iowa Straw Poll held right up the road in Ames. For $35 a pop, Republican Party members got to roam the grounds of Iowa State University, wolf down tons of barbecue pork, beans and watermelon provided for free by the various campaigns, sample the live country and rock bands, listen to three hours of speechmaking by the candidates, and then cast a "vote" for their favorite choice. About 14,000 did so. With McCain and Giuliani sitting it out, Mitt Romney spent more than $2 million on the effort and easily won with 32 percent of the vote.
But like Buchanan's speech 15 years ago, there were two moments during the weekend that, for me, spelled impending doom for the Republicans in the coming election. Romney, looking like he just walked out of a Ralph Lauren layout in Town and Country magazine, began his speech saying: "What brought us here is that change begins in Iowa and change begins today!" But there is no such change being offered by Romney or any of his major rivals. He proceeded to approve and even celebrate every major measure of the Bush administration: uncritical support of the war, the use of abominable interrogation techniques against terror suspects, walling off the southern border, repeal of abortion rights, more tax cuts for the wealthy and privatization of some portion or another of Social Security.
And Romney was the most mainstream of the candidates participating. On his right fringe was the guy who's now being advised by Pat's sister Bay Buchanan, none other than Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo, the fulminating anti-immigrant xenophobe, who brought with him his small but fervent "Tom's Army Against Amnesty." Tancredo's speech wasn't surprising in itself — it was his usual mean-spirited rant about militarizing the border, deporting 12 million illegals and saving "our culture." But there was that special moment when his rhetoric veered into a critique of the war on terror, accusing the pantywaist Pentagon of employing limp-wristed "multicultural rules of engagement" that let the terrorists off easy. "In a Tancredo administration," he then exclaimed, "there will be only one rule of engagement: We win — you lose!" The ovation was earsplitting, not just from the wing-nut militia he had brought in tow, but from the entire arena of assembled Republicans. At that moment, I knew the GOP fate for '08 had been sealed. Not so much by that speech, but by how broadly it resonated with the GOP base and by how much all of the candidates are pandering to that base. Just at a time when they have come to represent a very small slice of the electorate.
One shrewd local GOP strategist, Allan Hoffenblum, shares those fears for his own party. "With the exception of Giuliani," Hoffenblum told me this week, "all the Republican candidates . . . have moved so far to the right, trying to appeal to the so-called base voters, especially on the immigration issue, and just when the Latino vote will be imperative, that there is no easy way they can get any crossover votes come November. I can easily envision a possible Democratic landslide equal to 1964."
read on . . .
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