Social Contract meeting; and a story by Tancredo about Republicans and the border invasion

Ed H. writes:

I attended the Social Contract annual writers conference at the Key Bridge Marriot in D.C. on Sunday. This year’s speaker’s list was excellent. Ian Fletcher [see VFR items on Fletcher here] gave a first rate summary of American economic history as the story of controlled capitalism used for the protection of American identity and sovereignty. The theme was that Free Trade was never the norm, nor was laissez faire capitalism. The distortions of the Globalist Left and Globalist Right (e.g. Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Soros) are a complete aberration. Then there was a funny delivery by Tom Tancredo about his clashes with the GOP establishment on Capitol Hill over mass immigration, most notably the detestable Tom DeLay.

Finally a truly hilarious presentation by Peter Brimelow that could have been entitled “Mitt Romney: The Greatest Speeches Never Given” These speeches were full of passionate conviction, defense of traditional America, and dedication to the long term good of traditional America. They were very articulate and forceful, and never given by Mitt Romney. They were paraphrases of speeches by Benjamin Netanyahu in his current campaign to rid Israel of thousands of sub-Saharan squatters.

LA replies:

Another person who attended the conference told me the following about Tancredo’s presentation. Once at a meeting of the House Republican caucus, he played a film or video that showed an aerial or graphic view, somehow represented as lights against a dark background, of illegal aliens moving through a National Park on the Mexican-U.S. border at night. When the four-minute presentation ended, only four Republican congressmen were left in the caucus room. The Republicans were so offended by ANY critical angle on illegal immigration that they just walked out.

I’m repeating what I heard, as unbelievable as it sounds. Perhaps the account is wrong in particulars. Obviously, even at the start of Tancredo’s House career in 1999, there were more than four GOP congressmen who were opposed to illegal border crossings.

Ed H. replies:

Yes, Tancredo was finally given permission to show the video during the end-of-week Republican get together. The night vision video showed not just illegal aliens, but long lines of illegal aliens carrying bales of drugs on their backs and being shepherded by drug cartel types carrying AK-47s. This was at Organ Pipe National Monument, U.S. soil.

This is what the Republicans didn’t want to be aware of and walked out of. Nice. Tancredo was called into Tom DeLay’s office and warned to quit rocking the boat. When the warnings didn’t work he was called in a third time and Delay stuck his finger in Tancredo’s face and said “If you don’t start playing ball you will never have a future in this place.”

Tancredo couldn’t control himself and started cracking up saying, “Is that a threat? I hate this place,” and walked out. A few years later Tancredo left Congress an honorable man; DeLay had already left the Congress having been indicted for money laundering and taking contributions from Russian oil executives, charges for which he was later convicted.

LA replies:

A moral tale. I always said that Tancredo struck me not just as a genuine traditionalist conservative, but as an upright, moral man. That’s why I have twice cast a write-in ballot for him for president.

- end of initial entry -

David B. writes:

A while back I wrote you that we are starting to resemble a totalitarian state in which the rulers are doing very bad things while the citizens (and officials) “don’t know about it.” In that instance, I was referring to the liberal tendency to ignore black on white crime.

The story about GOP congressmen led by Delay refusing to watch a film about the border invasion is another example.

LA replies:

Ok, but now let’s put this story in context. Evidently it happened early in Tancredo’s term—let’s say around 2000. In 2006 the House Republicans passed an immigration bill that was 100 percent about enforcement and zero percent about “comprehehensive immigration reform” including amnesty. Meanwhile the GOP-run Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill. The two bills passed by the two Houses of Congress were diametrically opposed to each other. Subsequently the House Republicans did a most astonishing thing: they refused to meet with their Senate colleagues in a House-Senate conference to work out a compromise bill. They wouldn’t have ANYTHING to do with the egregious Senate bill. As I put it at the time, they stood like a stone wall against the worst bill in American history. As a result, “Comprehensive reform” died that year. It was brought up again in 2007, and failed to get to the Senate floor.

So, while one can be horrified at how the House Republicans treated Tancredo circa 2000, they changed a great deal in the subsequent years.

LA continues:

Here are some more of my many articles on the 2006 Senate bill which the House killed dead by refusing to go into conference to “iron out the differences” between the bills. As I said then, how do you iron out differences between two things that have NOTHING in common with each other?

The amazing and appalling immigration bill (March 28, 2006)

A way out of the impending immigration disaster (May 17, 2006. On Ron Maxwell’s idea that the House should simply refuse to meet in conference with the Senate—an idea the House actually adopted.)

The Senate, aided by economists and Christian thinkers, progresses toward the inconceivably insane (May 20, 2006)

Religious breakdown of the vote on S.2611 (May 26, 2006)

October 3

Terry Morris writes:

You’ve cast two write-in ballots for Tom Tancredo for president? Two successive ballots? Meaning ‘04 and ‘08? That is great!

I don’t think this is possible in Oklahoma. But I did manage to abstain in the presidential election for ‘08, and plan the same for ‘12.

Karl J. writes:

You mentioned writing in Tom Tancredo for President twice. I did in 2004, and in retrospect, consider it a truly wasted effort: correct me if I’m wrong, but write-ins aren’t even counted, are they?

But this time around I’m voting for Virgil Goode, who is on the ballot here in Virginia—I don’t know about NY. You haven’t mentioned him, at least not that I’ve noticed; he’s worth checking out, if you haven’t already. Being anti-abortion, he’s even more in your line than mine.

LA replies:

Casting a write-in ballot for someone who is not a write-in candidate, as I did for Tancredo in New York in 2004 and 2008, has no political or even legal meaning. The vote for that candidate is not even registered by name above the county level. But it’s not insignificant. A vote for president is an expression of one’s beliefs.

I did write about Virgil Goode a few years ago when he made a good statement about restricting or stopping Muslim immigration. And I commented on Robert Spencer’s bizarre article defending Goode from attacks. Spencer, instead of defending Goode’s actual position (which had to do with stopping Muslim immigration) defended him on some other point which Goode had not made but which was a favorite point of Spencer’s. It was further proof of Spencer’s automatic, virtually unconscious recoil from the immigration issue.

Here are the three VFR entries that have dealt with Virgil Goode:

Accentuate the Goode, eliminate the Bad

Dec 21, 2006 … Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia will undoubtedly come in for mounting denunciations over his honest and crucially important statement in… www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/006966.html

Spencer comes to Rep. Goode’s defense, sort of

Dec 28, 2006 … I love Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia for being the first U.S. politician to say that Islam as such is… www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/006998.html

Goode calls for cessation of almost all immigration

Dec 12, 2009 … Former Rep. Virgil Goode, who was defeated for re-election in 2008, writes: It is time for a moratorium. An… www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/015009.html

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 02, 2012 11:24 AM | Send