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(h/ Heather)

Tom Tancredo stormed off the set of the Ed Show when he was debating health care with Markos Moulitsas. Poor baby.

It all started when Tancredo started trash-talking the Veterans Administration, at which point Markos brought up his chickenhawk past. He got angry and tried the standard conservative whine, realized he was better quitting while he was behind, and then stormed off. The truth hurts, right Tom?

As a Republican student activist, Tancredo spoke out in favor of the Vietnam War. After graduating from the University of Northern Colorado in June 1969, he became eligible to serve in Vietnam. Tancredo said he went for his physical, telling doctors he'd been treated for depression, and eventually got a "1-Y" deferment.

Too many of these cowards discuss our troops when they themselves refused to serve when they had the chance. Here's Jed Lewison:

A few minutes ago on The Ed Show, Tom Tancredo tried to make the case against government health care by claiming that the Veterans Administration is unpopular with U.S. military veterans. The only problem for him was that he was up against Markos...who is one of those veterans, unlike Tancredo, a pro-Vietnam War chickenhawk who got a 1-Y deferment.

When Markos pointed out that Tancredo was (a) wrong about the Veterans Administration and (b) not qualified to speak for veterans, Tancredo exploded in anger, demanding an apology. Markos did not oblige, and Tancredo stormed off the set.

Funny, too, how the most thin-skinned of the wingnuts are the same people most prone to making vicious, uncivil, frequently racist and xenophobic remarks. Tancredo, after all, is a guy who claimed the National Council of La Raza was just like the Ku Klux Klan, and called Sonia Sotomayor a racist, and told the people of Brownsville, Texas, that they should build the border fence on the northern side of their city.

And then goes whimpering and whining off the stage when he gets a clean shot to the gut with hard facts. There's a street name for that, but this is a family blog.

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To the Villagers, the left have to be the ones to always, always compromise. If a president dares to govern to the left, it's mutiny in the Beltway. I don't remember the media getting all too upset when Bush's wingnut base freaked out over immigration reform and killed it. Tom Tancredo was invited to go on every talk show there was and even ran for president on it.

Tweety goes on and on saying the Democrats never even had fifty votes so if they wanted to use reconciliation they never had the votes to do it anyway, so they are just total failures. Really, Tweety? I wonder where he got his information from. A 900 number maybe...the Psychic Network...

Matthews: Yeah, so a lot of this has been talk, so Vick you pick up on this. Given the fact that the Senate's not going to approve a public option because they can't get any where near sixty...

Right...

...and by the way I'm wondering were they ever going to get fifty.

Yeah. And all these guys are going through reconciliation-- we're going to ram it through-- they never had fifty! Okay, that's just my hunch and my belief.

Matthews: And I would argue that if you're going to be the party that believes in government, which the Democrats do believe more than Republicans do, they believe in positive government-- you have to be able to govern and prove that you're affective at governing. If you blow it, you can't say you believe in government because you've failed at government. Thank you very much. That's a little redundant.

WTF does this mean? If you believe in government, but you fail to pass a bill---does that mean you don't believe in government? Isn't that what governing is all about? Republicans just say they hate the government so they can get elected to work FOR the government. Conservatives make a lot of money being IN the government, you freaking buffoon.

This type of health-care reform has never been done before. Ever. And with idiots on my dial only talking bullshit it really makes it hard for working families to ever get a fair shake. The Villagers like Tweety, with their million-dollar houses, actually think they represent average working-class families, but his rant just shows a lack of understanding about the basic workings of how political parties operate in America.

What does it mean to Chris when Bush (at one time Chris Matthews got very warm and fuzzy looking at the codpiece) failed to privatize Social Security? Lucky for us he didn't get a chance to destroy that also. OK...NEXT!

(h/t Heather at Video Cafe for the video)

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We've been reporting here at C&L for a long time on the way mainstream conservative pundits have been transmitting talking points, ideas, and a panoply of fake "facts" that originated on the extremist right and treating them as legitimate, thereby giving them credibility with the public they do not deserve, and in the process radicalizing increasing segments of the American Right.

Yesterday, Eric Boehlert of Media Matters hosted a panel of leading progressive who are ready to start speaking out about the phenomenon. It included officials from the Southern Poverty Law Center, America's Voice, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the National Council of La Raza, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, who set out "to examine how the mainstreaming of extremism impacts our security, politics, and culture."

The discussion follows on the heels of LCCR's timely report that was released earlier this week pointing out the toxic effects of mainstream right-wing punditry in helping to foment the atmosphere of intolerance, scapegoating, and violence that now surrounds the immigration debate. (Think Progress has more on this too.)

A classic example of this is about to occur: As America's Voice explains in a background briefing, this weekend's "America's Cause" conference will be a prime breeding ground for this kind of rhetoric:

For those who cover immigration issues, none of this hate speech is new. Nor is the fact that so-called legitimate spokespersons deliver hate-filled messages that flow seamlessly from CNN to the white nationalist foot soldier and to Congress in a flood of angry faxes and phone calls.

This weekend's American Cause conference is a vivid example of how the worlds of extremism, media and politics converge.
Look Who's Coming To Virginia:

According to the conference website, joining the Buchanan siblings at the meeting are such right-wing luminaries as: Tony Blankley, Tom Tancredo, Phyllis Schlafly, Terry Jeffrey, Ward Connerly, John Hostettler, Ken Blackwell, Christopher Horner, Richard Scott, Lou Barletta and Peter Brimelow. Leaders in the fight against healthcare reform, environmental protection, and more are joining unvarnished white nationalists to "Build the New Majority."

I've been talking about this subject on the radio quite a bit this past week, since it is the core subject of my book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right. I've been pointing out how the underlying dynamic is almost identical in nature to the challenge confronting communities when they have to deal with hate crimes and hate groups in their midst -- writ large, as it were.

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Tom Tancredo continues his media blitz on Hardball with David Shuster giving him a chance to put his racism on display yet again. He refuses to apologize for the La Raza remark and says he's not sure if the Obama administration "hates white people" or not. He also says that the "moderates" in the GOP are the reason they're losing elections. Yes... Tom Tancredo actually thinks the GOP still has moderates in their ranks. Well okay, they've got two.

When Tancredo misstated what La Raza meant and Shuster tried to correct him he just shouted over him. I know if the GOP has any influence with Tancredo since he's not in the Congress any more, but if they do they'd be wise to tell him to get the hell off the air. He's not doing them any favors with these rants.

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Tom Tancredo isn't the first to compare the National Council of La Raza to the Ku Klux Klan. But his use of the comparison not only tells us a lot about Tancredo himself, but also movement conservatism generally and the Republican Party particularly.

It especially tells us a lot about how readily they overinflate their own claims of anti-white racism on the part of minorities, while simultaneously minimizing the horrific terror of groups like the Klan.

Back in January of 2008, Jim Gilchrist -- cofounder of the nativist border-watch group The Minutemen -- used the same analogy on Glenn Beck's CNN Headline News program:

During the segment, Gilchrist compared the National Council of La Raza, which identifies itself as the "largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States," to the Ku Klux Klan. He claimed that a sign in downtown Los Angeles identifying "La Raza Plaza" "is perhaps a racist sign," and asserted that "La Raza and MEChA [the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán] are, in my opinion, the largest organized racial supremacy group in the United States today. And if we're going to have a La Raza Plaza sign, what's next? A KKK Plaza sign, a Black Panther Plaza sign? This goes right to the heart of free speech."

As always, this kind of rhetoric quickly circulates among rank-and-file members of groups like the Minutemen. Last July, Kyledeb of Citizen Orange talked to members of the Minutemen who were protesting NCLR's annual convention and recorded it on video. As you can see above, it's a pretty revealing encounter with the people waving signs equating La Raza with neo-Nazis and the Klan.

Note, however, that this "Ku Klux Klan" meme originated with earlier, similar claims about MEChA -- claims that have since been thoroughly debunked, though they still enjoy considerable circulation on the right.

And who originated the "MEChA = the KKK" claim? None other than Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds, who even went so far as to call MEChA -- in a case of mistaken identity for which he never apologized -- "fascist hatemongers". Moreover, the whole "MEChA is a racist group" meme played a founding role in the whole Reconquista! conspiracy theory promoted by Malkin et. al.

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Rachel Maddow responds to Tom Tancredo's racist screed on Rick Sanchez's show comparing La Raza to the KKK. She explains what the NCLR's mission actually is.

"Strengthening America by promoting the advancement of Latino families." And as Rachel notes "it's also the largest national Hispanic and advocacy organization in the United States". La Raza responded to Tancredo as reported by the Colorado Independent:

La Raza blasts Tancredo for Klan comparison: ‘Get his facts straight’:

The National Council of La Raza doesn’t think much of former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo’s attack on the 40-year-old civil rights organization as “a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses.” The Littleton Republican made the claim Thursday afternoon in an interview on CNN, arguing his claim that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sottomayor “appears to be racist.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” National Council of La Raza spokesperson Lisa Navarrete told The Colorado Independent. “He’s defamed our organization and told falsehoods about our organization without any basis in fact or evidence. That’s not who we are or what we do.

“If you look at Mr. Tancredos’ record, he’s often spoken about things he doesn’t know anything about.”

While the stakes couldn’t be higher, with Sotomayor poised to become the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court, Navarrete sounded more weary than incensed over Tancredo’s latest antic.

“He’s at the far extreme of the Republican Party,” she said. “He’s someone who has been instrumental in alienating the Republican Party from the Latino community. We’ve been urging the Republican Party to try to outreach to the Latino community, and they did a good job of it until they let people like Tom Tancredo take over the debate on immigration.”

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Rick Sanchez brings on Tom Tancredo and Media Matters' Eric Boehlert to discuss the right's accusations that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist and should be disqualified from serving on the Supreme Court. Today Tancredo decided his dose of the crazy on The Ed Schultz Show just wasn't enough and takes it a step further.

h/t Think Progress for the transcript

TANCREDO: If you belong to an organization called La Raza, in this case, which is, from my point of view anyway, nothing more than a Latino — it’s a counterpart — a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses. If you belong to something like that in a way that’s going to convince me and a lot of other people that it’s got nothing to do with race. Even though the logo of La Raza is “All for the race. Nothing for the rest.” What does that tell you?

SANCHEZ: Alright. We’re not talking about — we’re not talking about La Raza –

TANCREDO: She’s a member! She’s a member of La Raza!

Thankfully Media Matters' Boehlert was there for a dose of sanity and called out Rick Sanchez who was still quoting Sotomayor out of context and corrects him for his error. Boehlert, the author of the great book "Bloggers on the Bus," called the attacks on Sotomayor a "rush to the gutter by the right". You can watch the entire exchange courtesy of Media Matters here.

John Amato:

I ask once again. Why is Tom Tancredo on my TV? It's all for "conflict." He has nothing to offer and is no longer part of the GOP. He's a former anti-Latino House Republican who ran for president on a racist platform. He's there to call Sonia a racist. That's his function and it's one that he performs well. He's the Mozart of Racism.

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Republicans seem to have picked a meme for fighting the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court: She's a racist!

It's on all the wingnut tongues. We had Tom Tancredo spewing this line on The Ed Show yesterday -- yeah, the same Tom Tancredo who once sang "Dixie" with the members of a white supremacist organization, and whose entire presidential candidacy was built on bashing Latinos.

You could kinda see where this was going then.

Sure enough, the rest of the Right's leading Racial Sensitivity icons -- Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan -- all were singing the same chorus: "She's a raaaaaacist!"

Limbaugh: The infamous Donovan McNabb incident is only the tip of his lengthy race-baiting record.

Beck: The guy who likes to link Latinos to crime and hyperventilates about Mexican crime regularly.

Coulter: The woman whose new book soft-pedals the existence and activities of white supremacists.

Buchanan: The man whose recent books have been rehashings of old white-supremacist eugenics from the early 20th century, fretting about white privilege being overturned by an evil brown tide.

Coulter's a classic case of this: As Diane Sawyer tried to get her to talk about the upside of seeing a Hispanic woman nominated to the Supreme Court, Coulter dourly refused, pouting that liberals hadn't done the same for Clarence Thomas or the execrable Miguel Estrada.

Yeah, those are just ideal people to be leading this charge for Republicans.

UPDATE: Newt Gingrich joins the parade. He fits right in.

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The attacks on Sonia Sotomayor are coming in like a tidal wave by the extreme right, but former Rep. Tom Tancredo, one of the harshest critics of the Latino community ever to run for president, actually called her a racist. This is the man who boycotted the Univision debate and then attacked their entire audience.

On The Ed Show today, Mike Allen of The Politico was pretty on point saying that she's not anyone that the right could attack and wouldn't investigate her supposed racism, but Tancredo uses the already debunked and discredited talking point about Latino lady judges being smarter than the Tancredo- looking judges of the world.

(rough transcript)

Tancredo: Unfortunately for her and fortunately for us there are plenty of things that we've even talked about her already. I'm telling you, she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context...
---
Tancredo: You can still be a racist and have all those things in your background. You can be a racist and have all that stuff in your background.

Ed: How aggressive do you want the Republicans to be on the judiciary committee?

Tancredo: I think there's plenty of stuff that they can use and should. They should do to her what the Democrats did to Bork.

Ed: Like what?

Tancredo: I would continually bring up this quote of hers, I'd like her to explain that. It is incredible to me. There is no one else I can think of who could possibly have said the kind of things she said, If they are reported accurately about the benefits of being a brown women as opposed to a white man and interpreting the law and nobody can look at that and say that was not a racist, sexist statement that would disqualify anybody else...She is a Hispanic woman and we can't say anything like this..

His form of racism is an affront to all decency. As I've said before, I do not speak Italian because of the racism my grandparents endured when they came to America. He's Italian and he should be ashamed of himself. Why is this man on TV talking about race in America? What does he have to add? Here's one of Tancredo's racist campaign ads.

Tancredo's racism is such that he's the darling of the Malkin wing of the GOP. He's a man who even called Miami a "Third World country.”

I'm not kidding. And let's not forget his "bombing Mecca," statements either.

This isn't the pot calling the kettle black. It's the pot calling the tablecloth black.

Xenophobic bigot Tom Tancredo has come under fire for suggesting at a hearing yesterday in Brownsville, TX, that the proposed border fence ought to be built on the northern side of the town. Since the beginning of the immigration/border debate, Brownsville has become the "epicenter" of opposition to the fence.

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Valley Morning Star:

Boos and hisses emanated from the audience for a congressional field hearing when Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado dismissed residents' concerns that the effort to build 670 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border by year's end would damage the environment and destroy a centuries-old bond between residents on both sides of the Rio Grande.

Late in the five-hour hearing, Tancredo returned to a comment made earlier by panelist Betty Perez, a rancher and local activist. Perez said, ``It really isn't a border to most of us who live down here.''

Tancredo dismissed Perez's remarks as a ``multiculturalist attitude toward borders.''

As jeers rose, Tancredo added, ``I suggest that you build this fence around the northern part of your city.''

So what side of the border does Tancredo want to see Brownsville sitting? It's nice to see Tancredo get the reaction he deserves. Perhaps the "I hate everything foreign" card won him some points in the GOP primary, but it does nothing but alienate most sensible and thoughtful Americans.

Republican Tom Tancredo dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination this afternoon, endorsing Mitt Romney as the candidate who most closely shared his anti-illegal immigration fervor. Although Tancredo polled miserably, he left his mark on the race by pulling the Republicans--with the possible exception of McCain-- even further to the right on this issue.

And what did Tancredo think of his fellow Republicans appearing in a recent Spanish Univision debate? Don't ask. And don't let the door hit you on the way out either, Tom.

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Simon Rosenberg at NDNblog calls it 1%, 62% and the failure of Tancredoism:

As all of us try to make sense of the current immigration debate and how Tancredo's total rejection by Republican primary voters fits in let's consider these two figures: 1% and 62%. 1% is the share of the Republican vote Tancredo has been receiving. 62% is the share of Republicans who support an earned path to citizenship, according to a new LA Times poll taken two weeks ago. Taken together it appears that Tancredo's approach to immigration, "Deport Those Who Don't Belong, Make Sure They Never Come Back" has been overwhelmingly rejected by even Republican voters, and is just one more example of how the GOP's investment in the immigration issue has failed time and again to produce the results they had hoped for.

Tancredo has a little problem speaking English himself, but that's beside the point. The racist platform upon which his campaign is built is very saddening to witness. Watch his reasoning for boycotting the Univision debate.

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Q: Tom Tancredo, taking a lot of heat for refusing to take part in this Sunday's Spanish language presidential debate, it's airing on Univision. ---why take yourself out of this, sir?

Tancredo: Because I wonder to whom this audi...to whom you are supposed to to be speaking in a debate of this nature. Remember, that we are supposed to be talking to American citizens who have the right to vote. Alright, that's what a debate is for so you can inform that electorate. It's against the law to become an American citizen without the ability to speak and understand English. The law requires that. So, to whom are you speaking?

Q: Many Spanish speaking people still view Spanish as their primary language even if they have passed that test.

Tancredo: And that is the problem. We should not be encouraging that. My grandparents, when they came here. They would only let my grandparents speak Italian. They only let them speak English.

OK, jackass. Who is the "they" that made his grandparents only speak English? And who monitored their progress? What a fool. The "they" that he's talking about are the racists and now he's become part of that mob. And in the process of his race baiting---he attacks Univision's entire audience---essentially calling all viewers of Univision "Illegal immigrants," because they speak Spanish.

It's interesting to note that I never heard Tancredo mention his grandparents before. I wonder if he got the idea after Geraldo Rivera brought the subject up and shamed him about them in this video.

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My grandparents came to America in 1915. The ONLY reason I don't speak Italian at all is because of the intense racism that they were subjected to. PERIOD. For years, I would ask my mother why I couldn't speak Italian when I was a kid because I thought it would have been an important language skill to possess and I was proud of my family's heritage. Finally, when I was a teenager she told me. I find it hard to believe that Tancredo's grandparents weren't subjected to that same racism. This is what makes Tancredo all the more loathsome. My relatives would hang out during holidays speaking in Italian because it came natural to them, as it should. What kind of America would we have without the melding of our cultures? It's one I certainly wouldn't want.

Now Tancredo says the other GOP candidates are pandering...

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Tancredo takes his fear-mongering and hatred of brown people to a new level of disgust with this ad.

There are consequences to open borders beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs. Islamic terrorists now freely roam U.S. soil, Jihadists who froth with hate here to do as they have in London, Spain, Russia.

The price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill.

How can Heath Shuler co-sponsor legislation with someone that promotes so much fear in our country? Sentido explains the Trancredo/Shuler bill, also called the "Save Act."

Blue America is working with several groups in Chicago to help hold Emanuel accountable. We'll have more on that soon, but we'll need your help...