November 06, 2010 12:19 AM UTC

The GOP's "Tom Tancredo Problem"

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• by: Colorado Pols

That’s not the title of Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson’s article today, which is actually titled “The GOP’s Sarah Palin problem.” Read down a little, though, and you’ll see what we mean:

In the past, Palin embodied the populist style of the Tea Party movement while espousing a fairly mainstream Republican ideology. On economic, social and foreign policy, Palin seldom strayed from a simplified, popularized Reaganism. The Mama Grizzly may have been ferocious, but her talking points came from the Heritage Foundation instead of from shadier corners of the right.

This election season called that perception into question. Palin’s support for O’Donnell showed poor political judgment. But Palin went further, also endorsing Constitution Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo in Colorado, one of the most divisive figures in American politics. [Pols emphasis]

Tancredo has made a career of fanning anti-immigrant resentment and lobbing ideological grenades. The people who voted Barack Obama into office, in his view, “could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or even say it in English.” The National Council of La Raza is “a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses.” Miami is a “Third World country.” Pope Benedict’s embrace of immigrants is all about “recruiting new members,” in an attempt at “faith-based marketing.” “The guy sitting in the White House,” says Tancredo, is a greater threat to the Constitution than al-Qaeda. “If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don’t we just send him back?”

It was one of the best outcomes of Election 2010 that Tancredo was exiled from any position of public trust. But it is disturbing that Palin found Tancredo to be the “right man for the job.” Her endorsement raises the question of whether Palin has any standards for her support other than anti-government rhetoric…

Gerson was President George W. Bush’s head speechwriter and a Heritage Foundation senior policy analyst, so we accept him as authoritative when talking about “simplified Reaganism.” And we’re not at all surprised that, like many Republicans in Colorado nursing their post-Tancredo hangovers, Gerson rightly wonders what the hell Palin (and the rest of you) were thinking.