April 19, 2007 02:39 AM UTC

Tancredo Belittles Virginia Tech Tragedy

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• by: Tancredo Watch

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

Never one to keep his mouth shut when potential headlines beckon, Tom Tancredo is jumping on the Virginia Tech mass killing to issue a public “correction” belittling the scale of the recent carnage. The murderous episode wasn’t quite as bad as the press says it is, according to Tancredo.

While many press reports are calling the Virginia tragedy the worst school massacre ever, Tancredo’s office has declared that the Virginia Tech rampage is actually not THE deadliest school rampage in U.S. history. That distinction actually belongs to a 1927 school bombing in which approximately 48 people, mainly children, were killed. (It’s unknown whether the 1927 total still outranks the Virginia Tech rampage if wounded are also tallied.)

This appalling, tone-deaf attempt at one-upmanship is an example of why Tancredo is widely viewed as not ready for prime time. One can only imagine what the Congressman’s response would have been if some Virginia counterpart had issued a similar press release within days after the Columbine massacre.

Tancredo’s office maintains that it’s necessary to go public with this “correction” at this time of profound grief and sorrow – over a matter that his own spokesperson admits is nothing mooe than “splitting hairs” – to deflate any attempts to use the Virginia Tech shootings as an excuse to promote gun-control legislation.

That reasoning is odd, to say the least, and the timing is atrocious, hapless and cruel. While there are predictably a few liberal Democrats raising the issue of gun control again, most Democrats are aligned with Republicans in not wanting to re-visit that issue – and almost all other politicians are putting aside issues of partisanship to extend their deepest sympathies to the reeling Virginia Tech community.

Surely Congressman Tancredo realizes that this Congress is not about to move any gun control legislation forward in the near future. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said: “I think we ought to be thinking about the families and the victims and not speculate about future legislative battles that might lie ahead.”

If only Tancredo were so compassionate. But his most recent pronouncement is actually par for the course for Colorado’s controversial Congressman: the victims aren’t even buried yet, and Tancredo is busy at work trying to capitalize on the situation.

One can legitimately speculate about Tancredo’s true motive: is it truly about thwarting gun control legislation, or merely about keeping his own name in the headlines? Since he’s not been able to raise much money, “He can get free media by being on radio and TV shows and remaining controversial,” a political analyst recently noted in the Denver Post.

That may sound like a harsh judgment, but this is not first time that Tancredo has used personal tragedy in a shameless attempt to promote his own visibility. As Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Littwin wrote about Tancredo in 2005, after Tancredo tried to make hay out of the killing of policeman Donnie Young: For Tancredo “no tragedy is too horrible to exploit.”

Sources:
http://tancredowatch…
http://www.politico….
http://www.cbsnews.c…
http://www.denverpos…