Tancredo Wins Reagan Award

NEWS & ANALYSIS

REAGAN AWARD WINNER: Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) receives the President Ronald Reagan Principled Leadership Award from actress Jane Russell at the National Federation of Republican Assembly convention Saturday in Scottsdale./Dennis Durband photo

Congressman Tancredo Wins Reagan Award at NFRA Convention

By Dennis Durband, Editor
September 3, 2005

SCOTTSDALE -- Emerging from a prestigious field of contestants that included President George W. Bush, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo won the President Ronald Reagan Principled Leadership Award Saturday during the National Federation of Republican Assemblies national convention.

Congressman Tancredo is one of the nation’s leading advocates for border control. After receiving the award from actress Jane Russell, Tancredo delivered somber news before electrifying the audience in delivering the keynote address in the evening banquet at the convention.

At the beginning of his speech, Tancredo asked the assembly for a moment of silence for William Rehnquist, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who died Saturday. This was shocking news for many in the audience who had spent the entire day away from newscasts while attending convention events.

Tancredo addressed the lawlessness in New Orleans, a city in a state known for corruption and deference to the rule of law.

“The government of New Orleans and Louisiana is one of the most corrupt in the United States of America,” Tancredo said. “It is a place where corruption is celebrated. The state’s last three insurance commissioners are in prison. It is a place where the rule of law is not thought of as an important concept. When we have these kinds of events, we have a great deal of chaos and anarchy.”

Then Tancredo segued into another set of laws that is ignored in this country and he spent the bulk of his time speaking about the lack of control on the southern border with Mexico.

“There is a dislike of the rule of law, and the law is not enforced,” Tancredo said of the border invasion. “What does that tell them (illegal aliens)?”

The congressmen is predicting that as the House of Representatives re-convenes this week from its August recess, there will be passage of an immigration bill. But it won’t likely be a piece of legislation that NFRA members and others will endorse.

“Leadership told us we are going to have some kind of bill because so many people are raising hell,” Tancredo said. “All the people want to talk about is illegal immigration, and they’re finally getting the picture here. The title of the bill will probably be something like ‘The Security of America’s Borders and Feeding of All the Children of the World.’ When you get to the bottom of it, it will be amnesty – no matter how they try to dress it up. We are going to have guest workers. It will be the McKennedy Bill.”

The audience went wild over Tancredo’s obvious derision of the guest worker legislation presented by liberal senators John McCain of Arizona and Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Tancredo continued to describe this potential bill: “The president will say it’s not amnesty, but ‘regularization’; there is something a little Clintonesque about this.

No Praise for CAFTA

Next, Tancredo criticized the recently passed Central American Free Trade Agreement. He said the 1,000 of the 1,270 pages in the bill did not deal with trade, but most of it dealt instead with immigration. He warned that it will have negative impact, just as the European has had for its imposition of a Parliament and a constitution that have seriously eroded national sovereignty throughout that continent.

Tancredo said everyone talks about the reasons that aliens pour into the U.S. and no one examines America’s need. Alien needs should not form the basis of American policy, Tancredo said to rousing applause.

The congressmen recited a litany of stories explaining how multi-culturalism in public schools and the border invasion have eroded American customs and ideals.

“All I ask is when you get here, as our grandparents did, is to cut your ties to the past and connect with America,” Tancredo said to a thunderous standing ovation. “We are telling them they shouldn’t do that. They are telling them, ‘keep your linguistics, culture and language connections.’ If you can’t figure out where you are and where your allegiance is, I’d like you to go away and figure it out.”

Tancredo said a nation cannot win a war if it can’t identify its enemy. We are not at war with “terror,” he said, but with radical Islam.” He said we do so much to separate ourselves and asked if there aren’t some ideals we can all hang onto. “We need a president, somebody who will lead us in this endeavor – a renewal of spirit. It takes leadership, and we desperately need it.”

Radical opponents have gotten ugly with Tancredo and he asked for people’s prayers.

“We can survive all of this, the depressing things we see,” he said. “We need the leadership and the guidance of God.”