If a single-issue candidate can’t gain traction when his
signature issue catches fire, why does he keep running?
That’s the question raised by Congressman Tom Tancredo’s
longshot bid for the Republican presidential nomination. The GOP
base is hungry for a leader who will take a hard line against
illegal immigration. Instead President Bush and John McCain have
teamed up with Ted Kennedy in support of a bill that offers
conditional amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
This development is thought to be a major cause of the recent
40 percent drop in small-donor contributions to
the Republican National Committee. The Senate immigration bill has
been denounced by conservative bloggers, columnists, radio talk
show hosts, and activists. A Rasmussen poll found that only 26 percent of Americans
favor its enactment.
Yet Tancredo, the man immigration restrictionists consider
America’s most valuable politician, remains stuck in the 1
percent range in national polls. Any boost from the current amnesty
uproar to his presidential campaign is invisible to the naked
eye.
More puzzling, the latest immigration debates don’t even seem to
have raised Tancredo’s profile.
By contrast, Ron Paul has been much more successful at using his
presidential candidacy to gain a wider hearing for his opposition
to the Iraq war — a much less popular position among the
Republican faithful than support for a border security fence — and
general libertarianism, even if he hasn’t yet gotten much of a
bounce in the polls. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has at
least earned high marks for his homespun debate performances.
Meanwhile, Tancredo is struggling to distinguish himself from
Duncan Hunter, Tommy Thompson, and Jim Gilmore.
Tancredo’s performance in last night’s Republican debate at
Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire showed why. Given an easy
question on his main issue — and an opportunity to pound the
unpopular Senate bill — he botched it by giving a kitchen-sink
answer that maladroitly summarized his case against current
immigration policy.
More people will remember his story about Karl Rove — complete
with a vow to keep George W. Bush from darkening the White House’s
door — than will recall anything he said about the Senate
immigration bill.
His rivals didn’t make the same mistake. Rudy Giuliani, a past
supporter of amnesty who presided over a sanctuary city in New
York, skillfully slammed the immigration bill’s lack of unifying
purpose. Mitt Romney, another former McCain-Kennedy backer whose
current position on what to do with the existing illegal immigrant
population is basically incoherent, also scored points when he said
the federal government should enforce the laws already on the
books. Indeed, Romney has rather improbably established himself as
the field’s leading critic of the Senate bill, much to McCain’s
obvious
consternation.
It’s Tancredo who has the longest record on the issue, however.
His Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus has grown to include a
majority of the House Republican Conference. The contingent played
a key role in killing last year’s Senate immigration bill — and
may help defeat the present one as well. He champions the attrition through enforcement strategy that is the
leading alternative to a path to citizenship for illegal
immigrants.
So why are the Johnny-Come-Lately candidates stealing his
thunder? They are smoother. They are quicker with effective sound
bites. And they are more serious about running a winning
presidential campaign.
Perhaps Tancredo senses that things aren’t going well. He seems
to be shifting his focus from winning the GOP nomination to
defeating the Senate immigration bill, which he
calls the “Kennedy-McCain-Bush sellout of America.” But to move
beyond preaching to the converted, his presentation needs some work
— think less Archie Bunker and more Barbara Jordan.
If he can’t do it, the candidate might ask himself whether he is
actually helping his cause.
