Could immigration hardliner Tom Tancredo find fertile ground for his presidential bid in Iowa? The Chicago Tribune thinks so.
Tancredo is greeted with cheerful backslaps inside a crowded truck-stop diner that is minutes from an Indian reservation casino outside Sioux City. He has come to discuss what many in this rapidly changing corner of northwestern Iowa have waited for: his bid to become U.S. president.
They've seen or heard Tancredo, 61, during hundreds of appearances on cable TV news and talk radio, raging against one of the greatest immigration waves in U.S. history. His crusade to have every illegal immigrant in the U.S. deported and to make English the nation's official language has inspired a cult following for this grandson of Italian immigrants, attracting white supremacists and PTA moms alike.
While Tancredo's Republican bid is widely regarded as a long shot, the reaction he has received so far in Iowa shows his campaign can't be entirely dismissed, political analysts say.
Iowa, home to the nation's first presidential caucuses in January, has one of the fastest growing foreign-born populations, as mainly Latin American immigrants arrive for jobs in meatpacking plants, on farms and in construction.
Worries in the state about assimilation, shrinking wages and over-burdened schools and hospitals reflect deeper national concerns over immigration that aren't likely to be resolved by the changes being considered in Congress, according to both sides of the debate.
The longer the problem of illegal immigration lingers, the easier it will be for Tancredo to serve as a GOP spoiler as his hard-line stance attracts voters feeling overwhelmed by their changing social landscape, said University of Iowa political science professor Peverill Squire.
The newest "compromise" immigration reform bill was a godsend for Tancredo, though he is far from the only candidate in the Republican field who has come out against or highly critical of the legislation.
A recent University of Iowa poll indicated that 96 percent of Republicans in the state consider a candidate's stance on immigration to be "very important" or "somewhat important" in their vote, with 57 percent saying they support allowing illegal immigrants to "earn" U.S. citizenship if they paid back taxes and learned English.
The Trib notes that "top tier GOP candidates such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney recently have hardened their views." on immigration. The problem for McCain is that he helped craft the latest "compromise" that so many Republicans believe is too little border security and too much amnesty.
The same kind of Republicans who respect McCain for his tough stance on the Iraq war are the kind of Republicans who don't respect "compromise" immigration reform proposals that compromise efforts to close the borders and extend conditional amnesty to law-breakers.
Comment Preview