CORRECTION: I missed a May 7 Denver Post article, by Lynn Bartels, reporting that Tancredo “has been told conservative outside groups will spend money to make sure he doesn’t win the primary for governor, rather than helping him afterward.”
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Reacting to Lynn Bartels’ Denver Post article today reporting that Republicans are trying to push him out of the GOP gubernatorial primary, Tom Tancredo told KNUS talk-radio host Peter Boyles that he’s heard the Republican Governors’ Association (RGA) is “trying to raise money for a 527 to attack me during the primary.”
In response to Boyles’ assertion that the “Coors brothers and Bruce Benson and the power elite and the Chamber of Commerce” don’t want the “kinds of things” that he does, Tancredo said, “I actually think that there are some of these guys that would rather have a Democrat elected here.”
Prompted by Boyles, Tancredo also said that before his primary opponent Bob Beauprez entered the race, Beauprez told Tancredo the Chamber of Commerce and Republican governors encouraged Beauprez to run.
“You know, and I told [Beauprez] at the time, ‘Look,’ – because he was saying, ‘You get out of the race. I’ll get in.’ And I said, ‘Bob, I have 7,000 contributors.’ You know what, Peter? It’s now over 10,000 individual contributors to my campaign. [Do] you know what the average is? Sixty-seven dollars. God love these people. I’ll take their endorsement any day over Mitt Romney’s. I’ll tell you that right now.”
“And I said, ‘I’m not going to – you can’t expect me to get out of this race, because – just because — why? We had coffee? Just get in!’ I told him. ‘Get in! Run! You might be the guy that knocks us all off of the block and you make it, and God bless you, and if you can beat Hickenlooper, hey, I’m with you, buddy! But I don’t think you can. I don’t think any of these other guys can either. I’m closer to Hickenlooper in the polls than any of them.”
“And, I have more independent supporters than they do,” Tancredo told Boyles. “Now, Peter, if you want to run – win a race in Colorado, are you going to do it with a traditional Republican campaign, traditional Republican candidates? Or are you going to do it with somebody that’s going to try to bring independents and unaffiliateds on board. I think I can.”
“I am running as a Republican,” said Tancredo on air. “I either win or lose! You know, this idea that this is somehow this is , what–subversive—for me to run? Give me a break! I have as much, I think, opportunity and chance of winning this race as anybody else. Why shouldn’t I give it a shot? Maybe they’re all right. Maybe I can’t. Maybe it’s all – all the stuff they say is true. Well, then, if they believe that, there’s a way to handle that. You can just vote for someone else.”
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Tancredo supporters are dedicated and will vote. 37% of the vote in 2010 was for Tancredo when he was running on the American Constitution Party. I was a poll watcher, and I saw how the ACP poll watchers handled themselves.
They were suspicious of every Latino voter, intrusive (they kept having to be backed off), and obmoxious…and they stayed there, on their feet, through a long day of voting.
I also personally knew some young white men in the construction industry,who loved the Tank's message that immigrants were taking their jobs. It was actually kind of hard to argue with them, when I saw the everyday reality of what contractors would do: hire immigrants, pay them starvation wages, exploit the hell out of them, and not hire the young white males for anything near a living wage.
But the young white guys didn't blame the exploitative contractors, nor the "broken immigration system". They blamed the immigrants. That was Tancredo's message. Those are Tancredo's base voters, and there are unfortunately, thousands of them in Colorado.
I understand why the GOP establishment would not want to acknowledge this greasy underbelly of nativist politics in the year of courting the Latino voter, but it won't go away by wishing Tancredo would just shut up. He'll never shut up, and he isn't going to just go away.
yup
If they're courting the Latino voter they're sure going about it in funny way. Their desperate drive to pass voter suppression measures would seem to prove that they've given up on attracting and are simply going to try their hardest to hold back the demographic tide for now, the operational word being "now". They seem to just hope they can go on appeasing the bigot base and somehow still be able to deal with the future when it arrives.
Maybe they hope they can once again make the kinds of inroads, based on appealing to older minority voters' conservative social and religious attitudes, that they made without ticking off the base back when GW was running? Fat chance. Demographics again and all round changing times.
I think their long term plan for dealing with demographic and generational change is the same as their plan for replacing ACA after they repeal it, attracting more women voters or meeting the challenge of dramatically rising sea levels. Non-existent.