As Colorado’s newest members of Congress are being sworn in and readying their offices, the messages for two of the Centennial State’s outgoing federal lawmakers have been less than flattering. Indeed, a Denver Post profile about former Rep. Tom Tancredo and retired Sen. Wayne Allard has hardly turned out to be swan songs for the lawmakers, at least to the many who’ve left comments of response.
Headlined “Allard, Tancredo ride off into the political sunset,” the lead-off of the story itself, by Anne Mulkern, could have been more punchy had the reporter acknowledged the sheer irony: Here is Tancredo, who ran a single-issue anti-immigrant platform for president (read: close the southern U.S. border) citing his favorite movie, “Brave River” — oh wait, that would be “Rio Bravo.”
Anyway, in Tancredo’s favorite movie with a Spanish name, Ricky Nelson and John Wayne fight a battle against the bad guys. “To draw their opponents out,” Mulkern writes, “Nelson fires a shot and says: ‘That ought to start something.’ It does, with the gunfight resuming.”
So, just as in the movie, during his time in Congress Tancredo reportedly fired metaphorical shots, making provocative statements about immigration and apparently making it the issue of the century.
Meanwhile Allard, well, Allard was Allard, the guy TIME magazine once termed the “Invisible Man.” Now he will go serve on some boards or maybe become the chancellor at Colorado State University.
The anonymous comments posted at the end really made the story worth reading, however. Here are
some samplings:
From “Eggs Ackley”: I have no idea what planet Tancredo is living on, but neither McCain (nor Palin) brought up the illegal immigration in the campaign. Total non-issue. If anything he was generally seen as a blowhard.
Wasn’t he also one of the GOP morons who raised his hand when asked if they didn’t believe in evolution? These were the scary people of 2000-2008, RIP.
From “g.r.r.”: Hearing Allard and Tancredo gripe about the deficit has to be the biggest joke going. BOTH of these guys never saw a deficit that they did not like unless it was by dems. When it came from their fellow pubs, they loved it and said NOTHING. They voted right along with their party, lockstep into putting us into deficit and where we are today.
Hopefully, CSU is not foolish enough to hire a do nothing senator as its president…
From “Thomas”: Good riddance to two grumpy, arrogant, self-centered, elitists.
From “John D” (Complete with extensive charts attached): It’s going to take a while to repair the damage of GW’s cartel. These folks that call themselves “conservatives” need to rethink their “platform”. Also, btw, “trickle down” economics does not work! They did a great job of alienating the rest of the world, and bankrupting the US (and much of the World).
Just wait until the full extent of the lies about how the Iraqi War got started finally becomes mainstream knowledge.
— US Casualties: 4,200+
— Wounded US: 30,600+
— Overall : 4,500+
— Civilians: 100,000+
From “globalizer”: So Colorado has rid themselves of 3 dullard representatives (Apparently a reference to Marilyn Musgrave)! And Minnesota is about to do the same to one of their reactionaries. Life is good, or at least headed in the correct direction….though a tad on the chilly side.
