June 21, 2012 04:08 PM UTC

Say It Ain't So, Tom Tancredo (Redux)

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• by: Colorado Pols

As reported by Hatewatch, the blog of the Southern Poverty Law Center Tuesday:

Tom Tancredo has no more secrets.

The former Republican congressman from Colorado, known for his biting anti-immigration rhetoric and campaign ads suggesting Latino immigrants are rapists and drug dealers, is scheduled to be the luncheon speaker at next month’s annual conference for the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). The theme of the conference? “Multiculturalism – the Death of America.”

Sharing the dais with Tancredo will be a rogue’s gallery of the racist right, including James Edwards, who hosts the white nationalist Political Cesspool radio show; Don Black, the former Klansman best known for creating Stormfront.org, the first major Internet hate site; and Leonard Wilson, a longtime segregationist and Alabama commander for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a neo-Confederate group that, like Tancredo, staunchly opposes immigration.

For those who have watched Tancredo go through endless contortions to distance himself from his racist friends, speaking at a CCC conference seems to be a turning point…

But it would seem that 2010 Colorado gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo does have at least a few more secrets–Hatewatch updated their post yesterday:

On Wednesday – a day after failing to respond to Hatewatch’s request for comment – former congressman Tom Tancredo’s Team America PAC wrote Hatewatch to say, “Tom Tancredo is not speaking at the Council of Conservative Citizens” (CCC). The unsigned email did not say if Tancredo had withdrawn from the speaking engagement after receiving widespread criticism or had never agreed to speak…

But you too can see above the front page for the Council of Conservative Citizens’ spring 2012 newsletter, which very prominently displays a photo of Tancredo and identifies him as the Saturday keynote speaker for their annual conference in Nashville next month.

So, did Tancredo cancel? If so, why? Was his listing as the CCC’s featured speaker a mistake? Is it possible that Tancredo simply wasn’t aware he had signed up to speak before one of the leading white supremacist groups in the United States? That last possibility seems unlikely.

Perhaps the Republicans who endorsed Tancredo for Governor in 2010 will ask him.