MERRIMACK, N.H. — As Tom Tancredo meandered through a living
room phalanx of supporters, two young brothers squeezed their way
forward to meet the long-shot Republican presidential
candidate.
“Did you at least get out of some homework coming to this?”
Tancredo joked.
“Spelling,” the older admitted with a shy smile, twisting in
place as he blushed at the attention.
“I knew it!” Tancredo laughed. “I hope it’s worth it, but I have
to warn you: There’s going to be test.”
Needless to say, neither a box of No. 2 pencils nor mimeographed
quiz sheets were passed around at the end of the evening. If,
however, there had actually been a test, the cheat sheet
might have looked something like this:
“Open Borders” Synonym: Suicide
Pact.
Multiculturalism: Popular cult in late
20th/early 21st Century United States.
“OTM”: Shorthand for Other Than Mexican
illegal immigrants, many with nefarious purposes. (Tancredo:
“They’re not all coming here to do jobs Americans won’t do, unless
you can’t find an American to blow up an American city.”)
Balkanized: See United States,
2007.
Mecca/Medina: 1) Islamic holy sites; 2)
places to aim tactical nuclear weapons at as a deterrent
against terrorism. (Tancredo: “What motivates the jihadists?
Is it Iran? Is it Saudi Arabia? No. It’s Allah.”)
Patriot Act: Something sissies worry
about. (Tancredo: “People are worried about the Patriot Act?
If a dirty bomb or a series of bombs are set off in this country,
it’s going to make the Patriot Act look like a Sunday school
picnic.”)
Sunday School Picnic: Social event superior
to a dirty bomb.
Yes, there was a touch of apocalypse in the air as Tancredo,
encircled by more than thirty solemn people gathered like soldiers
around a general at the final battle, detailed a dystopian future
in which America, broken economically (“We are importing our own
poverty into this country”), disintegrates from within as jihadists
send suicide bombers across every ruptured border while
unassimilated immigrants who “hold Sharia law above the U.S.
Constitution” and “Islamified” Europe applaud.
It may sound like a fairly bleak portrait, but humor was not
entirely absent from the proceedings: Tancredo described catching a
glimpse of his effigy being burned on the news one evening, a
Death to Tancredo sign hung around its neck. “‘Death’ was
spelled wrong,” the firebrand Colorado congressman guffawed shaking
his head and bending over to slap his knee. “‘Tancredo’ was spelled
right!”
EARLIER, A JUBILANT BILL LESTER had welcomed supporters and the
curious alike as his wife Claire collected jackets and motioned to
a tempting cookie and soda buffet. A placard in an adjacent sitting
room festooned with Tancredo for President posters invited
visitors to ponder a quote from erstwhile Nixon biographer Monica
Crowley (“[Tancredo] was talking about the festering problem of
illegal immigration before it was hip”) en route to the living room
where In Mortal Danger occupied a place of
honor on the mantelpiece and a larger than life Lou Dobbs stared
out from a 72-inch television screen.
“He’s pretty good,” Bill Lester said, nodding at the screen. “No
Tancredo, but…”
The Lesters are your textbook all-American family. Comfortably
middle-class, they own a beautiful midsized home on a picturesque
cul-de-sac. Bill and Claire rise for work — he in the medical
industry, she in the tech field — before six a.m. and often as not
return after six p.m. When one son isn’t playing hockey, he’s
playing lacrosse. When the other son isn’t wrestling, he’s playing
football. They have an extraordinarily sweet dog that did her best
to maintain a stiff upper lip while her home was overrun by
strangers.
Busy with life, the Lesters have never volunteered for a
candidate, much less invited one into their house before
tonight.
“I really, truly believe the country is at a crossroads,” Bill
Lester explained earnestly. “I’m worried about a political
correctness in this country that denies us any logical discussion
of our problems. So when this guy comes along and talks about the
real issues and says what he believes and gets beat up for
doing it, you bet I’m going to stand up and do whatever I can for
him.”
Tancredo has an unusually unguarded, easygoing rapport with his
supporters, even for a lower tier presidential candidate. He seems
honestly touched by the reception and, sometimes, the adulation he
receives. It’s a symbiotic relationship, with Tancredo and
supporters behaving like members of a super-politicized couple who
finish each other’s sentences.
“This clash of civilizations is a battle that’s been going on
for hundreds of years…” Tancredo said at one point.
“1400 years…” someone in the crowd added.
“Right.” And do you know what day the hordes were stopped at the Gates of Vienna, Tancredo
asked.
“September 11,” a voice from the other side of the room
answered, as scattered gasps rose up. And back and forth it went
for more than an hour, an impressive feat in the context of modern
politics, but also a bit disturbing at times given how dark
Tancredo’s take on the state of the nation/world is. (No
one, for example, took issue with the proposal that we hit our
Saudi Arabian ally with nuclear weapons to retaliate for a
terrorist attack that didn’t originate there.)
Such close communion with everyday people is not out of
character, according to Tancredo staffers. “I’ve worked with a lot
of candidates all over the country,” one of the candidate’s advance
men said. “Tom’s different. He’s a real guy. He carries his own
luggage. He flies alone, and just calls when he gets in for a ride.
There are some state legislators who are more demanding. He’s
down-to-earth in a unique way for politics.”
As Bill Lester watched Tancredo’s van pull away that evening, he
was in a wistfully similar frame of mind. “He’s the kind of guy you
wouldn’t mind seeing move into your neighborhood,” he said. “What
other presidential candidate can you say that about?”
SUPPORTERS VEHEMENTLY REJECT any suggestion Tancredo is floundering
because he is perceived to be a single-issue candidate and, indeed,
the candidate can point to “A” grades from the American Conservative
Union, the NRA, National Taxpayers Union, Family Research Council
and others. Yet in conversation supporters invariably cite
illegal immigration as the wellspring of their affection for
Tancredo, rattling off a dizzying array of fears: Illegal
immigrants infecting America with smallpox. Illegal immigrant
terrorists. Illegal immigrants bankrupting social services. More
than one attendee fumed over the local cable company’s recent
decision to drop a country music station and keep three Spanish
language channels. “We’re losing the music of our country and
keeping stuff we can’t even understand,” one man complained to
Tancredo.
Some of the conviction was visceral, personal. “I came here
legally,” Diane Lothrop, an emigre from England who, with her
husband Chuck, also recently hosted a Tancredo house party, said.
“I waited in line for years to become citizen. And if I can do it
the right way, so can everyone else.” Of course, the average Brit
and the average Mexican day laborer have much different needs and
resources. This isn’t a crowd that would take kindly to, say, Cato
Institute studies or Wall Street Journal editorials, though, and many place the blame for
Tancredo’s lack of buzz not on policy, but mass media.
“If Tancredo loses I’m not going to die or anything,” Chuck
Lothrop said. “But I’m also not going to just give up on his
candidacy because the media tells me he can’t win.”
STILL, WHILE NONE OF HIS supporters are quite willing to rule out a
miracle, at this point both they and their candidate seem to
recognize it is unlikely Tom Tancredo will be working out of the
West Wing come 2009. “I know, if nothing else,” Tancredo said at
the beginning of his talk, “our camp has moved this issue and
forced my opponents to deal with it.” At moments, Tancredo seemed
just another observer of the race. “Boy, you can tell the caucus is
getting real close,” he said at one point. “They’re really going
after each other.” Alas, the Stop Amnesty/Vote Tancredo
bumper stickers already seem antiquated. When Tancredo says things
like, “I would be a happy camper if this whole process was shrunk
down to six weeks,” you don’t get the impression he’s expecting a
late surge.
Instead, Tancredo offered another measure of his success. He
mused about the early days of his crusade, the hundreds of hours
spent on talk radio shows. “I used to ask myself, ‘Does anyone
care? Is anybody listening?’” He doesn’t wonder anymore. The
Hillary driver’s license flap and his Republican opponents’
surprisingly brutal dogfights on sanctuary cities and lawn workers
are proof enough. When Tancredo repeated his debate one-liner about
the other Republican candidates trying to “out-Tancredo Tancredo,”
everyone laughed appreciatively, then sighed. Predictably, Tancredo
has his doubts as to whether anyone can actually out-Tancredo him.
“I love the rhetoric,” he said. “But how can we really know who
believes in their heart and who is just watching polls?”
As the primary campaign enters its twilight and Tancredo
prepares to retire from the congressional seat he’s held since
1999, a certain melancholy began to seep in as the evening wound
up. “I don’t want this conversation to end just because the
frontrunners take over,” a woman said, her voice strained with
emotion. Tancredo paused and looked down for a few moments. “God
doesn’t say we have to win every battle, but we do have to fight,”
he said finally, adding. “You can move people. You can move
nations. And it starts in rooms like this with people like you.
“You can become so defeatist and just walk away from it all,” he
continued. “Well, I refuse.”
There are worse political epitaphs.
American Spectator Contributing Editor Shawn Macomber is writing a book on the Global Class
War.
