By: Adele M. Stan If the latest Rasmussen survey of likely voters is to be believed, in the Colorado governor’s race, anti-immigrant gadflyTom Tancredo is polling within four points of the frontrunner, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat. The Rasmussen poll shows Hickenlooper at 42 percent, Tancredo at 38 percent and Republican Dan Maes at just 12 percent.
When Tancredo jumped into the Colorado gubernatorial race, most political analysts simply rolled their eyes. After all, this was the guy who, at the Tea Party Nation convention in Memphis earlier this year, advocated a return to literacy tests for voter registration, a practice that was used and abused for decades in the South to keep African-Americans from the voting booth. And this was the guy who called Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor “a racist” who should be “disqualified” from serving on the bench, and a member of “a Latino KKK.” The most Tancredo could hope for, the thinking went, was to be a spoiler by splitting the right-wing vote between himself and Maes, the Tea Party-backed candidate who won the G.O.P. nomination in an upset.
If you think his rhetoric is scary, consider this:
To make his third-party bid, Tancredo signed on with the American Constitution Party, which despite its secular-sounding name, is a party based upon the principles of Christian Reconstructionism, whose adherents seek to have biblical law — including the execution of LGBT people and the stoning of adulterers — instituted as the law of the land. (Both Rand Paul and Sharron Angle have links to the Constitution Party, as we reported here.)
Pat Buchanan, when he threatened to bolt the Republican Party in 1996 after winning the New Hampshire presidential primary and a nice slice of delegate pie in other states, openly flirted with the party Tancredo now finds himself in. (Back in Buchanan’s political heyday, it was known as the U.S. Taxpayers Party.) Tancredo has long been allied with Buchanan, who supported Tancredo’s presidential bid for the G.O.P. nomination in 2008. As she did for her brother in 1996, Bay Buchanan served as Tancredo’s presidential campaign manager.
Even as he surges on the Constitution Party ballot, Tancredo now seems to be seeking some distance from the party’s extremist platform, which calls for an end to public education and all public “welfare” programs — including Medicare and Social Security — and the banning of abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. The platform’s wording of its plank on HIV/AIDS prevention suggests that gay sex is “perverted.” “My joining the American Constitution Party this year is a marriage of convenience not of love,” Tancredo told the Colorado Independent. “This is not some [philosophical] metamorphosis. I needed to get on the ballot and the [American Constitution Party] needed to draw votes.” (Don’t you feel better already?)
The Rasmussen poll shows 59 percent of Republican voters backing Tancredo.
Other recent polls show a much larger gap between Tancredo and Hickenlooper, but all show the Constitution Party candidate gaining on the Democrat. The most recent Denver Post/Survey USA poll shows Hickenlooper with a 12-point lead, but that poll was taken more than two weeks ago, on September 29. Rasmussen is sometimes dismissed by observers for being too weighted in Republicans’ favor, but in races that fail to follow predicted courses, Rasmussen is sometimes more on top of on-the-ground sentiment among G.O.P. voters, especially late in a race. A Fordham University report (PDF) ranked Rasmussen first in accuracy in for its final poll of the 2008 presidential election — ahead of Pew and Harris, and far ahead of Gallup (ranked 17th). Rasmussen also accurately polled the 2004 presidential race.
Ugly Hatred: Twisted Colorado ‘Republican‘ Group Calls Obama ‘Angel of Death‘
About The Author: Adele M. Stan is the Washington bureau chief for AlterNet, the progressive news and culture Web site.
Stan has served as a columnist and blogger for The American Prospect Online and as a featured essayist for The Guardian’s Comment Is Free site. Stan’s work has also appeared in The New Republic, the Village Voice, The Nation, The Advocate, Salon.com, the Washington Blade and Mother Jones magazine, as well as on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Daily News. She began her media career at Ms. magazine, where she served both on staff and as a contributing editor.
Along the way, Stan developed expertise in covering the intersection of religion and politics, in addition to lifelong specialties in women’s issues and pop culture. Her Mother Jones cover story on the religious right is considered by many to be a definitive primer on the movement; a special 10,000-copy reprint sold out its print run.
Stan has also served as a contributing writer to Mother Jones, and Washington correspondent for Working Woman.
Outside of the office, Stan indulges an array of interests, with music taking center stage. She is in the midst of planning a second career as a lounge-singing ukulele-player.
Former Colorado congressman, Tom Tancredo, currently running as a third-party candidate for governor, told Talking Points Memo: “There is something about this [country] that [Obama] dislikes intensely.” For example? “I remember a little thing, like Ms. Obama saying she didn’t want any Christian artifacts in the White House during Christmas time.” “Yeah, remember that? Remember how the Obamas scrubbed the White House of all signs of Christmas, because they hate Christmas? When you go into the White House during Christmas time, you wouldn’t even know it was Christmas, because of Michelle Obama.” [ READ MORE ]
At an event for Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck, the racist and CANINE Republican Xenophobe, Tom Tancredo smeared President Obama:
“…..But I firmly believe this… The greatest threat to the United States today, the greatest threat to our liberty, the greatest threat to the Constitution of the United States, the greatest threat to our way of life; everything we believe in. The greatest threat to the country that our founding fathers put together is the man that’s sitting in the White House today.”
Modern American conservatism is based on an almost endless series of grievances. Author Thomas Frank coined a term for it: the conservative “plenty-plaint” — a long and ever-evolving list of personal and cultural gripes dressed up as an ideology.
But there’s also fear! And while it spans the breadth of the movement, this is the year of the Tea Party revolt, when the grassroots right, disgusted with the idea of semi-affordable health-care and tepid financial reforms, is rebelling against even its own establishment. And the divide between the grassroots base and its leadership extends to the very fears that animate them.
As we’ll see, the conservative movement’s business-attired hacks and the hard-right Tea Party types waving misspelled signs out in the streets have some very different causes for alarm.
So, here are ten of the most interesting things that absolutely terrify Wingnuttia. First, a few terrors of the real hard-core Right. For the Tea Partier, the midterm GOP primary voter, it’s not just the anxiety over social change that typifies more traditional conservatism. A broad chunk of the GOP base today is animated by wildly unrealistic terrors — monsters stalking them as the sun sets, perhaps hovering just beyond their peripheral vision.
1. Government Concentration Camps
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, who’s been facing uphill prospects for re-election in Nevada, is breathing a sigh of relief that his newly nominated Republican opponent, Sharron Angle, isn’t a typical civil libertarian. According to Talking Points Memo, Angle endorses the views of (and may be a member of) the “Oath Keepers.” It’s a fast-rising right-wing group “whose membership of uniformed soldiers and police take an oath to refuse orders they see as unconstitutional — including enforcement of gun laws, violations of states’ sovereignty, and ‘any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps,’" according to TPM.
Fear of Obama’s Kenyan shock troops rounding up good conservatives and throwing them into Thunderdome-esque detention centers is nothing new on the Right. For years, conspiracy theories about “FEMA camps” have been percolating among the more feverish true believers. At TrueSlant, Matthew Fleischer wrote about a friend discovering that one of her co-worker’s believed there to be an imminent threat:
FEMA was building camps to round up and annihilate Christians. The roundup would start soon, but it would move slowly and quietly. Whole families would disappear and not be heard from again, but it would be made to look like they simply moved out of town. Christian children, her children, would be gassed and put into plastic coffins. Two of the woman’s friends had already moved out of the country. Others were following soon. She intended to join them as soon as she could save up enough money. But finances were tight and it might be too late.
The coming Obama Reich will naturally be justified by his own version of burning down the Reichstag — the Brownshirts will blame say they’re responding to Right-wing terrorism. In 2009, when the Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning of violence from Right-wing extremists, it caused near-apoplexy among the brethren. Talkradio host Roger Hedgecock summed up the danger like this: “So, if you disagree with Obama on amnesty for illegals or stand up for the Second Amendment, you are branded a ‘rightwing extremist’ by the Department of Homeland Security and become the subject of scrutiny by some 850,000 local and state law enforcement personnel.” All of this led one commenterto observe, “At least we know now who all those FEMA camps are for.” Oh, the report was commissioned during the final years of the Bush administration — Homeland Security just end up releasing it under Obama.
2. Moooslims!
If you pay attention to the Right, you might think there are large Islamic armies occupying a few majority-Christian countries these days instead of the other way around. If their rhetoric didn’t justify real-world violence, one could say conservatives have becomeentertainingly unhinged when it comes to Islam. Here’s a blurb for Mark Steyn’s ominous-sounding book, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It:
Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are. And Liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"–while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides Sharia law doesn’t violate the "Separation of Church and State," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on Gay Rights in favor of the much safer charms of Polygamy. If you think this can’t happen, you haven’t been paying…
Hey, it could happen! Bloggers have uncovered General David Petraeus embracing “the jihadist rhetoric of Islamic anti-Semitism,” a nefarious plot by the Obama administration to transmit Islamic messages at an international nuclear summit, a similar plan by Food Network star Rachael Rae in cahoots with Dunkin Donuts and a plot by MasterCard to finance Islamic terrorism through those credit card fees. Perhaps most alarming, however, was a sinister scheme by devious Muslims to infiltrate the highest levels of government by applying for low-level internships in Capitol Hill offices. Only the tireless diligence of brave far-Right lawmakers like Reps. Sue Myrick (R-NC), John Shadegg (R-AZ), Trent Franks (R-AZ), and Paul Broun (R-GA) kept them from achieving their goals.
3. They’re Coming to Take Your Guns
During the 1990s, the Democratic Party came to the conclusion that gun control was a losing issue at the national level. (Not that they’d ever tried to ban guns, of course — gun control advocates had only sought to further limit the types of arms being sold, but mostly they pushed for background checks and stricter licensing requirements.) But the Right — and especially the NRA, which needs to raise money — never got the memo. With the election of a Kenyan Candidate, things have become decidedly more feverish. As Media Matters noted:
Since President Obama’s election, several conservative media figures have warned their audiences that Obama is planning to, in the words of Glenn Beck, slowly but surely take away your gun or take away your ability to shoot a gun, carry a gun" or have suggested that a government effort to ban guns is likely.
This irrational fear is cause for a certain amount of rational fear among others. There have been at least two incidents of (no doubt already unhinged) people who took this threat so seriously they gunned down police officers in cold-blooded attacks.
4. Article 3 of the United States Constitution
Remember those Oath Keepers? They say they’ll honor their pledge to uphold the United States’ Constitution by defending against federal encroachment on states’ rights. Like a lot of Right-wingers these days, they believe they’re doing the Lord’s work based on the 10th Amendment, which says that powers not expressly granted to the feds remain in the hands of the states.
Ah, but there’s a conundrum! It’s Article 3, which gives the Supreme Court the power to say whether a law oversteps the powers designated to the Federal Government. Believe it or not, the Founders never intended for the most reactionary law enforcement personnel in the country to decide disputes between the states and the central government, so they created a court to do that job. It’s one of the enumerated powers in the Constitution!
5. Plotting Global Elites
Somewhat lost in the brouhaha over Kentucky senate candidate Rand Paul’s views of the Civil Rights Act was his worry over the coming of the “Amero,” the official currency of the absolutely terrifying North American Union to come.
It’s an increasingly popular conspiracy theory about a group of shadowy and mostly nameless international "elites" who are planning to "replace the United States" — in the words of Jerome Corsi, a key figure in the SwiftBoat Veterans for Truth project and a leading NAU conspiracist — with a transnational government. The theory holds that the borders between Mexico, Canada and the United States are in the process of being erased, covertly, by a group of "globalists" whose ultimate goal is to replace national governments in D.C., Ottawa and Mexico City with a single trinational state ruled by a bloated EU-style bureaucracy.
The North American Union story is an offspring of the John Birch Society Right, with its simmering xenophobia and paranoia. It’s terrifying, but fortunately it’s also completely baseless.
It should go without saying that the Tea Partiers are also a bit apprehensive about the conservative establishment-types because the latter are elitists who live in high-rent cities along the coasts. Much of their alarm was of course stoked by those slick political operatives with partisan ambitions in mind. But once stirred to fear, a group of terrified people can be tough to control. The political hacks find the Tea Partiers useful, but no doubt also look upon them with some trepidation because they’re crazy and might hurt someone. That, combined with a changing electorate, causes conservative leaders — ostensibly sensible people — an entirely different set of anxieties.
Their fear can be summed up as: Oh My God, We Won’t Be Able to Win a Race for Dog-Catcher Outside the Deep South!
6. The Decline of Married White Christians
This one worries the operative class: the decline of married white people who identify as “Christians.” The GOP relies on them — they represent the party’s most loyal demographic.
To be clear, there are a lot of white people, a lot of married people, and a lot of people who say they’re Christians. But the share of American voters who are white and marriedand identify as Christians has been in a long and steep decline, and by every estimate will continue to fall.
That tidbit comes from an analysis by Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz. As he put it, “In American politics today, whether you are a married white Christian is a much stronger predictor of your political preferences than your gender or your class — the two demographic characteristics that dominate much of the debate” among the pundits. These two bone-chilling graphics reveal the trend:
Because the plenty-plaint is so flexible, you can rest assured that tomorrow’s conservatives will never run out of wedge social issues. Nonetheless, some of the most popular aren’t being embraced by the kids these days, and that’s cause for alarm among those trying to win some elections.
An analysis by Columbia University statisticians found a “generation-gap” on support for same-sex marriage that they called “huge.” According to the nerds, “If policy were set by state-by-state majorities of those 65 or older, none would allow same-sex marriage. If policy were set by those under 30, only 12 states would not allow-same-sex marriage.”
According to the Pew Social and Demographic Trends Project, “About two-thirds of people 65 and older said religion is very important to them, compared with just more than half of those 30 to 49 and 44 percent of people 18 to 29.”
Even the rural-urban divide is becoming narrower, at least in terms of lifestyle. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the number of Americans who hunt has dropped seven percent over the past decade, and NPR notes that “fewer young people, in particular” are taking up the sport.
The generation gap cuts across a range of social issues — including interracial marriage and abortion. "Around the notion of morality and work ethic, the differences in point of view are pretty much felt across the board," Pew’s Paul Taylor told the Associated Press. He said the gap has never been greater.
8. White Minority Status
Many people believe that in 2050, if birth and immigration rates do what experts expect them to, white folk will become a minority in the United States. This caused the so-totally-not-racist-and-how-dare-you-even-suggest-as-much Pat Buchanan a shiver of fear, tinged with a hint of nostalgia:
In 1960, when JFK defeated Nixon, America was a nation of 160 million, 90 percent white and 10 percent black, with a few million Hispanics and Asians sprinkled among us.
We were one nation, one people. We worshipped the same God, spoke the same English language, studied American history and English literature, honored the same heroes, read the same books, watched the same TV shows, went to the same movies …
That never happened in reality, of course.
But … that America is now gone forever…. In 2050, there will be three times as many people living here as in 1960 ? 420 million. White Americans will be a minority, 49 percent, and falling… By countries of origin, America will be a Third World nation.
Oh, cry for the European Americans! Or don’t — Pat’s numbers don’t include white people of “Hispanic heritage.” When you factor those white folks in, 74 percent of the population will remain pasty in 2050, down just six points from today.
9. And the Browning of America
Among the political class a more reasonable fear is that the base’s boiling rhetoric over immigration will permanently alienate Latinos and Asian Americans, two fast-growing voting blocs that are heavily concentrated in a handful of key swing states. Rather than shaking over the prospect of a white demographic minority like Buchanan, they’re afraid the venom coming from Republicans like Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and JD Hayworth (R-AZ) will saddle them with a structural inability to win national elections for a generation. As former Republican House majority leader Dick Armey, the chairman of the corporate-funded front-group Freedomworks and a key organizer of the angry and ostensibly “grass-roots” Tea Parties, put it, “Who in the Republican Party was the genius that said that now that we have identified the fastest-growing voting demographic in America, let’s go out and alienate them?”
American XENOPHOBIA: Anti-Immigrant FEAR, HATE and LOATHING
[CLICK PLAYLIST FOR MENU]
Here’s another one that scares the Right-wing coastal elitists who in fact run the conservative movement, the operatives.
Most people understand that the Right’s corporate patrons don’t care for organized labor because it hurts the bottom line. But there’s another thing to fear: Union members are more likely to vote their economic interests than be blinded by culture war distractions.
In 2004, although George Bush won the votes of white working-class men by 25 percent over John Kerry, blue-collar white guys who belonged to unions broke for Kerry by 21 percent. Charles Noble, a political scientist at IC Long Beach, commented, “Clearly, union members had a different perspective on the election, most likely provided by the unions themselves, which poured millions into educating and mobilizing union households.” In 2008, John McCain beat Obama by 25 percent among all gun owners, but Obama won over union members who pack heat by a 12 percent margin. Guy Molyneux, a partner with Hart Research, which conducted exit polls for the AFL-CIO, told the New York Times that white male union members “supported Mr. Obama over Mr. McCain by a margin of 18 percentage points, while for all white men, exit polls found they backed Mr. McCain by a 16 percent margin.”
White working-class “Reagan Democrats” voting for the colored guy? The horror!
There you have it: it’s a scary world out there, and the Right represents a big, strong Daddy figure who can guide you through.
About The Author: Joshua Holland writes for AlterNet. AlterNet is an award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources. [ READ MORE ]
Kai Wright: The great thing about racists is they’ll always take the bait. You won’t get far into an immigration-reform debate, for instance, before the GOP’s more zealous legislators start doing things like criminalizing priests and calling Miami a “third world country.” Which is why Democrats ought to be more eager to spend 2010 debating immigration. | ———- | Michael Gerson: “….. chaos at the border is not an argument for states to take control of American immigration policy– an authority that Arizona has seized in order to abuse.” “American states have broad powers. But they are not permitted their own foreign or immigration policy. One reason is that immigration law concerns not only the treatment of illegal immigrants but also the proper treatment of American citizens. And here the Arizona law fails badly.” — [ READ MORE ]
The gun just went off in Arizona, and will force president Obama and the Democratic party to try and fix the immigration system once and for all….or else lose an important portion of the Democratic base.
With healthcare done, Obama should not be shy to embark on immigration reform, for I believe it is the hot and hostile proceedings will produce the “electric jolt” with which to re-ignite the insufficiently “agitated” Democratic base of voters.
Now is the time to administer the “CYANIDE PILL” to the racist and uncompromising Republican right.
Bring it on Mr.President! They will bite, and it will bring out the worst in them.
Immigration policy is perhaps the weakest spot for the GOP, and Obama should and must exploit it to the maximally.
While violent and crude anti-immigrant sentiments WILL motivate and overheat the racist GOP goon-base, it will equally be a powerful motivator for Latino and other Democratic voters — just like in the 2008 presidential elections; and will split the GOP right through the middle.
In anticipation of a summer debate, they (Republicans) are already lying about immigration reform: Recently Fox aired a “hate” group’s claim that Obama promised “mass amnesty” in exchange for health votes [ VIDEO BELOW ]
Well and good. Mr. President you need to pump the heat up the GOP’s rotten ass …hard, NOW!!
American XENOPHOBIA: Anti-Immigrant FEAR, HATE and LOATHING
[CLICK PLAYLIST FOR MENU]
Shep Smith calls AZ immigration law the “breathing while Latino law,” says it “sounds a lot like the old ‘driving while black‘ law”
References:
1.Demystifying Immigration: A new report sheds some light on the makeup of the immigrant workforce. Nearly half of foreign-born workers in America’s largest metro areas work in white-collar jobs, including management, sales or administration, according to a new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute. Immigrant workers are roughly evenly distributed among a wide variety of jobs and income ranges, the report notes, a data point that should provide ammunition to those calling for more “startup visas” for foreign-born entrepreneurs. [ READ MORE ]
2.Do conservatives really think new AZ immigration law is just like federal law? — Conservative media have claimed that parts of Arizona’s new immigration law are similar to federal law and that, therefore, the law should not be controversial. In fact, the immigration enforcement powers given to local law enforcement under the legislation represent a dramatic departure from current policies and would, according to many experts, lead to racial profiling, strained police resources, and distrust of law enforcement within the immigrant community. [ READ MORE ]
If the latest Rasmussen survey of likely voters is to be believed, in the Colorado governor’s race, anti-immigrant gadfly Tom Tancredo is polling within four points of the frontrunner, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat. The Rasmussen poll shows Hickenlooper at 42 percent, Tancredo at 38 percent and Republican Dan Maes at just 12 percent. 
, in which the author details the porn wars, date rape controversy and theory on sexual harassment that helped define the modern feminist movement.
