That’s all this is (via Dave Weigel and Atrios):
[Tancredo] said Americans have reached the point where “we’re going to have to pray that we can hold on to this country.”As for Obama, Tancredo said, “If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don’t we just send him back?”
Of course, recent Democratic Congressmen talked about sending Bush back to whatever country MoveOn claimed he was from, too. So you’re all hypocrites for criticizing Tancredo.
jibeaux
All I’m sayin’ is, I think Tancredo is on the Ethnicity DL — real Amurican names do not end in “o” — and that in time his Meskinness will be revealed, and God willing and the creek don’t rise, we can send him back.
Cat Lady
Tancredo ain’t exactly a Pilgrim name either.
dmsilev
Can we send Tancredo back to the 1830s where he belongs?
dms
DCPlod
Tancredo’s Italian grandparents would be proud of his enlightened attitude to those with roots in other countries.
New Yorker
When I saw the text of the hyperlink and I saw “upstate”, I groaned a bit, wondering what the hell Tancredo was doing in Syracuse or Binghamton or wherever and why people there wanted to hear him.
But then I forgot that South Carolina also has an upstate and a much larger population of crazies than New York. Whew, panic averted.
SIA
Ok tell me again, when we’re gonna hit peak wingnut?
cleek
since Tancredo is only 2nd generation American. he should really STFU about “sending people home”
Ann B. Nonymous
During the 2008 election season, Nate Silver used the percentage of people marking “American” on their Census forms as their ethnicity as a variable. Given their geographic concentration, I took this to mean “Scotch-Irish with no sense of history”.
What would Belfast look like should Obama pass the Wingnut Repatriation Act? I think Stuckey’s and Shoney’s would improve Northern Ireland’s cuisine, but I am willing to be convinced otherwise.
beltane
Tancredo means goat f**ker in Italian. Just thought everyone should be aware of that.
AxelFoley
@Cat Lady:
MattF
@SIA
There’s a definite merging and progressive concentration of wingnut themes here, whether the non-linear self-suction has developed sufficient intensity to produce a Schwarzschild radius is still unclear.
DougJ
The Waffle House certainly would.
Hypnos
@beltane: I don’t want to ruin the joke, but I think you can do better by tracing the real meaning of the name.
It’s a variation on the Italian Tancredi, which is actually an italianization of a French name, specifically a Norman one (the Normans conquered Sicily).
The original name would be “Tancred”.
Which wikipedia tells us means “well-thought advice”.
Some irony there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tancred
someguy
Tancredo deserves praise. At least he’s not spouting assassination fantasies like so many others on the right.
geg6
There is supposed to be a big Tea Bagger rally here on Saturday at the courthouse. My John and I had already planned on being there, with phone cameras running, hoping to catch some of these assholes being what they are. But I now got an email from Beaver County Blue that they plan a counter protest in the park across the street (if you have ever seen the film “Gung Ho,” it had scenes from that park in it…look for the pavilion). So we will be with Beaver County Blue, most likely. Which I fully expect to lead to screaming battles, if not fist fights. I plan to hang out with the USW and SEIU people. Hopefully, they’ll get some asshole like Tancredo to come and say something stupid I can catch on film.
chris
@DougJ:
And man…An IHOP?? WoooT
Svensker
Weigel’s column has a vid of some So.Carolina good ol’ boy questioning whether or not Lindsay Graham’s gayness — or hiding thereof — could be causing him to sell out the country. I think that line of thinking should be pursued. Heh.
As for Tancredo, I’m sure he’s never heard or used the word “paisan,” because he’s a true blue ‘murican, not one of those swarthy immigrant types whose name ends in a vowel.
El Cid
DCPlod:
QUICK! QUICK! PULL UP THE LADDER! QUICK!
Polar Bear Squares
Can we call him a racist now?
DougJ
@chris:
And man…An IHOP?? WoooT
That’s more northern, though, I think.
David in NY
Has anybody seen an analysis of the resemblance between the reaction of the Chicago city council to the election of Harold Washington as Mayor and the reaction of the Republican Party and right wing to Obama’s election as President? I’d say pretty similar.
Zifnab
@cleek:
Anchor baby! Anchor baby! Repeal the 15th Amendment!
ajr22
OT. So I wake up make some breakfast, have a cup of coffee, and turn on msnbc to see what they are jabbering about. Oh they got a interview with Bill Clinton, that might be worth watching. Then I hear “Bill Clinton will sit down with Luke Russert after the break.” I actually spit out my coffee, and shed a tear for journalism. It’s one thing to give him a job hanging around the village dispensing common knowledge, but Msnbc is sending him to interview former presidents now. This can’t be life.
SGEW
Well, I do have a vague memory of seeing a sign at a protest that said something like “Send Bush Back To Jesusland.”
Tancrudo
Bush was from Paraguay, right? Because he sure is a pariguayo.
mds
Yeah, someone should ask Pat Buchanan what he thinks of a johnny-come-lately like Tancredo stealing his shtick.
rootless-e
Let’s send Tancredo back to Italy for a lesson on the creative use of piano wire on fascists. He could visit the museum.
Ash Can
@David in NY: And how, they’re similar. Great point. (And to this day, I’d like to slap Fast Eddie Vrdolyak around till he cries.)
SIA
@ ajr22 yeah I just saw that. Glad they had a real journo on the job.
@ MattF, um, ok. I’m counting on you to lei me know when that happens.
Pangloss
Bush is from Texas, which, I hear, wants to be its own country.
Maude
@ajr22:
Clinton is playing President Knows Best. He’s advising the president to pick someone for SCOTUS that isn’t a lawyer.
Clinton had all of his Supreme Court nominees sail through the confirmation process…oh, wait.
The Clinton show has begun. It will be a regular series.
The working title is: Elder Stateman Voices Wise Words For The Less Experienced POTUS.
cleek
@Pangloss:
don’t believe his lies. Bush is from Connecticut.
twiffer
@cleek: shhhhhh! we gave him away to texas. don’t tell him any different, he might try to come back.
Elie
Its all just noise, and the emotion of being reduced to a circus act, though I know we must fight back and refute, the Repubs and white supremacists are just acting out.
Obama is a successful President and most of the people in this country know that. The others, screaming and throwing their little poop balls and screaming as they swing on their tires, well, they are just doing all they know to do…they have no content in their rants because there can be no content to them — Obama is doing good things for this country and they deeply know that too.
We still need to respond to them and track what they do and say, but they will hardly be a footnote in history. The media as well — looking for entertainment value to bolster their decreasing ratings and continued irrelevancy. Any look at the Sunday talk shows highlights their side show… the train is moving past the station the are on and speeding up…
NR
It’s okay. Obama will fix everything with more bipartisanship.
different church-lady
You can’t send someone back to Toyland.
serge
@Tancrudo…
I think that was Paraguano, actually.
As I sit here behind my desk in SC’s Holy City, muttering to myself, I want to cry out, “Forgive them, they know not what they do…” Bunch of lame-ass, hardly literate, knuckle-dragging motherfuckers asking Tancredo here. And not one of these recidivist neanderthals would give up the “workers” who clean up their houses and yards. Perish the thought…
Brachiator
@Elie:
And yet the GOP and conservative ABC strategy (Always Be Criticizing) is having some effect, according to some recent polling: “Four out of five Americans don’t trust Obama (but his approval ratings are soaring overseas)”
I absolutely expect the worst conservative pundits to explain how Obama’s positive ratings abroad are further signs that he is un-American.
Elie
@Brachiator:
Sorry — I don’t believe that poll. For sure the media and Repubs make some headway with their constant negativity — but its not deep and I am not trusting the sources of these polls either. Do you?
They have to scream and belch hate. If they stopped, they would truly disappear. There is no content — just emotions and the main one is fear…its what stimulates their adrenals and lets them know that they are alive….the constant message of impending doom, the placards screaming that Obama is taking away their guns, their white women and the free world as we know it. It would be humorous and pitiful in almost any other country except ours right now.
Slowly and clearly painfully, our country is unthawing from a deep freeze of sorts that sealed shut our open discourse and prevented true power sharing with the people. We have a long way to go for sure, but the blood flow returning back to our long misused and unused institutions such as the Congress and the Courts, is causing a lot of pain and consternation. They know each second of returning blood flow is another step away from their control of power. So, while I expect it to remain painful for some time and for the returning blood flow to pull a lot of poisons from the long dormant tissue of our political awareness and involvement, we should not be fooled by their theatrics to mean anything but for us to keep going.
Brachiator
@Elie:
I think the poll is reasonable. I don’t believe that it is necessarily definitive or the final word.
The Pew Poll, “Distrust, Discontent, Anger and Partisan Rancor,” gives an pretty good background for its findings.
I think that some of the poll results reflect the unrelentingly negative GOP campaign against Obama and the Democrats. And as I noted in my earlier post, the GOP would use even a glowing poll result to bash Obama, perhaps suggesting that he was hiding his soc i alist, Muslim, Marxist ways from them.
But the point is that the fear that some feel is real, palpable, and prevents them from considering anything else, even their own self-interest. But the Democrats must confront and defeat this fear. They cannot simply observe or dismiss it.
There is an ongoing battle between those who want the unthawing, and those who want the deep freeze to continue. The GOP truly believe that Conservative Republicans are the only legitimate rulers of the United States. They tried to prevent Bill Clinton from governing, but were partly countered by his charisma. They are using similar tactics with Obama.
They are trying to prevent Obama and the Democrats from governing, and have focused on the fear of a small core of citizens to provide a rationalizing wedge to oppose the current Administration.
The Pew poll is a useful indicator of the status of the larger battle.
Elie
@Brachiator:
I am certainly not going to dispute that the hate has had its impacts. As I said in my model, there is a lot of poison floating into circulation as this change in taken forward. I also don’t assume that we won’t have reversals — maybe some very serious. That said, I am encouraged that the administration and the plurality of the public, still is generally moving forward, not backwards. Of course, it is just my opinion, but I don’t think that when push comes to shove, moving backwards is actually what is desired. Even if you are scared, and feel negative about a situation because of the pain involved, (like treatment for a painful medical condition), you still know that the alternative is not really an option… so you growse about the medical profession and how much the treatment costs, and how long you have to wait when you go for an appointment and how long it took to recover, and so on. But you show up to get the treatment done….
Maybe not the most perfect analogy but something like what I think is going on
CADoc
If I remember, the left did want to send Bush back to the village that lost its idiot, but the assumption was that it was an American village.
hal
@38
Isn’t the headline they used more than a little inflammatory? People not trusting the Government is nothing new, and the poll seems to be about Government as a whole, not Obama. It’s not personal rating system for him.
And of course, Americans can never be consistent, can they?
Released Sunday, the survey found that just 22 percent of those questioned say they can trust Washington almost always or most of the time and just 19 percent say they are basically content with it. Nearly half say the government negatively affects their daily lives, a sentiment that’s grown over the past dozen years.
Brachiator
@Elie:
Sadly, there are people who will delay seeking medical treatment, or who will rely on quack remedies and the advice of charlatans, only to find that it is too late to seek out effective treatment.
The Republicans are so determined to maintain power that they willfully appeal to fear and worse. Some of those who fear Obama and the Democrats, and keep alive the insipid myth that Obama is not really American or really for America remind me of those who opposed one of the first women rulers, the Indian leader Razia Sultana, who was opposed simply because she was a woman, even though she was wise and capable.
In the case of Razia Sultana, fear won out and she was ousted in favor of incompetents. That tea baggers and others have a love affair with an idiot like Sarah Palin is telling.
So far, America’s common sense is winning. But the wingnuts exploiting an appeal to fear won’t easily be countered.
Elie
@Brachiator:
I think that you are too pessimistic. Not saying we are all going to be having rainbows and sparklies all the time and not saying that we wont have set backs. Just that none of those possibilities are a reason to stop.
So, if we aint stoppin, lets just move ahead, stick our chests out and stop creeping around like we have something to fear around every corner. That may be true, but what good does it do to focus on that rather than our strengths and capabilities? They are not undefeatable — as has already been demonstrated.
Brachiator
@Elie:
I am trying to point out the obstacles, but I am not a pessimist. I mentioned earlier that the American people’s common sense is countering some of the most outrageous attacks on the Democrats.
On the other hand, I always believed that some degree of racial discomfort mught erupt after Obama’s election (just as Hillary Clinton’s election might have generated some stupid anti-feminist feelings). But if someone had suggested that some state governors would try to ressurrect the dead bones of the Confederacy as being worthy of celebration, I would have laughed at them.
I am less surprised at the staying power of the Obama is not American mythology, kept alive by the GOP. But I am dismayed when I see Americans eat up GOP lies and potentially vote against their own interests because they have become convinced that Obama has a secret plan to oppress “real Americans.”
Ultimately, as I’ve noted before, this means that people of good will have a fight on their hands. We cannot either assume or hope that people will just snap out of it and do the right thing.
Archibald Leach
Bush’s real country?
I believe that would be Dumbfuckistan…