McCain maneuvers while 'Tank' plows toward '08
Gary Martin: San Antonio Express-News
It's awfully early, and 2008 seems light years away.
But the political posturing is under way on Capitol Hill, with presidential hopefuls casting an eye on distant party primaries that could lift or doom aspirations for the White House.
And this week saw two Republican potentials moving in seemingly opposite directions.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., reopened his political action committee, Straight Talk America, signaling the 2000 candidate is pondering a possible 2008 run.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., and his one-issue presidential campaign, meanwhile, suffered a severe wound this month with his off-the-cuff musings about the United States taking out "a few Islamic holy sites."
Tancredo, or "The Tank," as he is endearingly known, is leading a crusade in the House on immigration reform that would bolster enforcement on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Colorado congressman has made immigration his signature issue and a platform to seek the GOP presidential nomination.
McCain also is engaged in immigration reform, although with a decidedly different tack, filing a guest-worker bill that Tancredo has denounced as "amnesty" legislation.
"There might be a little more lipstick on this pig than there was before, but it is most certainly the same old pig," Tancredo said of the McCain effort.
Immigration reform could become a hot-button issue in the 2008 race — and it will if Tancredo has his say.
He's been to — or is scheduled to go to — the primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, where GOP voters will winnow the Republican presidential field.
Tancredo has pledged to bring up the issue of immigration reform, and if the top-tiered GOP candidates fail to adequately address the topic, the congressman vows to run, according to staff spokesman Will Adams.
Pro-immigration advocates have long loathed Tancredo for his strong, restrictive viewpoints on immigration, both legal and illegal. But it would be wrong to say that those viewpoints don't have mass appeal.
There has been a groundswell of support for more border enforcement following the terrorist attacks of 9-11, even though, as Republican Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, points out, the vast majority of illegal crossers on the U.S.-Mexico border are driven by economics, or jobs.
Tancredo has been provocative on immigration policy, prompting accusations of bigotry from the pro-immigration lobby and dismissal as a loose cannon by others not emotionally tied to the issue.
But while he has fended off the attacks in the immigration debate, he played to those stereotypes July 15 during a radio interview on Florida's WFLA talk show with Pat Campbell, discussing a book by an FBI consultant on the likelihood of a nuclear terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Tancredo mused over the hypothetical, saying that if "this happens in the United States and we determine it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you could take out their holy sites."
Campbell prodded: "You're talking about bombing Mecca?"
The Tank: "Yeah."
Needless to say, moderate Muslims worldwide reacted angrily and demanded an apology, as did newspapers in Tancredo's home state of Colorado.
Tancredo has refused to budge.
"He is not going to apologize for that," Adams said.
Political experts say the remarks and outcry could further marginalize Tancredo's vanity campaign for president.
"We can pretty much guarantee he is not going to do very well," said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "Republicans will see him as too extreme to do well in a general election."
McCain, meanwhile, has opened his PAC to pay for speaking engagements and raise his profile with other Republicans facing re-election in the 2006 congressional midterms, giving him clout and political capital for a presidential run.
The 2008 presidential primaries are a long way off, but the maneuvering and missteps have already begun.
gmartin@express-news.net
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