July 05, 2007 07:39 PM UTC

Iowans Love Tancredo's "Send 'Em Back" Schtick

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• by: Colorado Pols

He’s running for President. Or Senate in 2010. Or he may just keep his CD-6 congressional seat.

Whatever he decides to do, Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo is at the peak of his influence right now as he swings through presidential primary country in the wake of the immigration reform bill’s failure, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

Tom Tancredo is used to anger and hostility. But success is something else. So when the Senate buckled under a wave of popular protest and rejected an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, Tancredo wasn’t sure how people would respond.

The five-term Republican congressman from Colorado is not just the hard-line face of immigration reform. His run for the GOP presidential nomination is based entirely on a platform that can be summarized in a single sentence: Seal the border and send ’em back.

A three-day Iowa swing, after the Senate bill’s collapse last week, was a triumphal lap of sorts. But it was also a test: Would victory stoke the forces that helped kill the legislation? Or, Tancredo wondered, would followers say, “Geez, we’ve won the day. Let’s go home now.”

He needn’t have worried. The people who burned up talk radio and filled the Internet with their fury, who blitzed the White House with their faxes and e-mails, who crashed the Senate switchboard with their indignant phone calls are still spitting mad…

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg survey last month found that about 4 in 10 Republican primary voters nationwide said immigration was the most important issue facing the country. (That compared with a quarter of Democratic primary voters.) The figure was probably high, inflated by the intense emotions stirred by the Senate debate, but few see the debate ending with the bill’s demise.

“The issue is not going away,” said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Des Moines’ Drake University. “The only question is how much will be subject to demagoguery and how much subject to some reasoned discussion.”

Whether you think Tom Tancredo represents the “demagoguery” or the “reasoned discussion” in the debate over immigration is irrelevant. As long as illegal immigration is an issue, Tancredo will be there making sure his name is prominently mentioned. And love him or hate him, it’s working.