Echoing Rep. Lamar Smith’s (R-TX) false claim that President Obama is “awfully close” to violating his oath of office by not securing the border, former Rep. Tom Tancredo published an error-ridden op-ed in today’s Washington Times calling for Congress to impeach President Obama:

Eleven years ago, like every citizen elected to serve in Congress or any person appointed to any federal position, I swore an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

I’ve always thought it significant that the Founders included domestic enemies in that oath of office. They thought liberty was as much at risk from threats within our borders as from outside. … Mr. Obama is a more serious threat to America than al Qaeda. We know that Osama bin Laden and followers want to kill us, but at least they are an outside force against whom we can offer our best defense. …

Mr. Obama’s most egregious and brazen betrayal of our Constitution was his statement to Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, that the administration will not enforce security on our southern border because that would remove Republicans’ desire to negotiate a “comprehensive” immigration bill. That is, to put it plainly, a decision that by any reasonable standard constitutes an impeachable offense against the Constitution.

Of course, Tancredo’s argument is built on fraud — even Kyl himself has walked back his false claim about Obama’s border security intentions, and spending on border security has “skyrocketed” under Obama.  Sadly, Tancredo’s frivilous call to impeach Obama likely enjoys strong support among right-wing lawmakers.  Yesterday, for example, newly-minted Tea Party Caucus leader Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) explained that a GOP Congress’ entire agenda should be to “issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another.”

- William Tomasko

Republican Ken Buck, who is running for the U.S. Senate seat in Colorado, has been dubbed “the next Sharron Angle” and received far-right endorsements from conservatives like Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and RedState editor Erick Erickson. However, on Thursday, Buck attempted to distance himself from his supporter Tom Tancredo, the former GOP congressman from Colorado, who called Obama “the greatest threat to our liberty” at a campaign event that also featured DeMint:

“The greatest threat to the United States today, the greatest threat to our liberty, the greatest threat to the Constitution, the greatest threat to our way of life, everything we believe in, the greatest threat to the country put together by the Founding Fathers, is the guy who is in the White House today,” Tancredo said in a report by the Denver Post.

Buck said he did not agree with Tancredo, though he’s glad to have his support.

“I was surprised when Tom said that, and I think Tom tends to exaggerate sometimes,” Buck said. “I respect, frankly, President Obama. I disagree with him on a lot of his policies.”

Watch it:

But on Saturday at the first annual Western Conservative Summit — focused on renewing “America’s moral core” — Buck changed his statement and said that Tancredo’s comments had “a lot of truth“:

Taking the stage briefly after Tancredo, U.S. Senate hopeful Ken Buck said, “The other day my good friend and supporter, Tom Tancredo, said that the greatest threat to this country is the man who occupies the White House, Barack Obama. There is a lot of truth in what Tom Tancredo says.” [...]

“The greatest threat folks is not a single man, but rather the progressive liberal movement that is going on in this country. It is the $13 trillion of national debt; it is a huge threat to our security and financial system; Obamacare, cap and trade, card check, our disintegrating relationship with Israel. It is a huge threat to this county.”

Buck has tried hard to insist that he is not out of the mainstream — even though he has advocated eliminating the Departments of Education and Energy. So late Saturday, the Buck campaign did some damage control, with a spokesman stressing that Buck differed with Tancredo because of his belief that the greatest threat was more than just one man. This view, however, doesn’t make Buck any less extreme. Instead, it places him in the camp of people like Newt Gingrich (who has compared Democrats to Nazis) and far-right Mississippi state Sen. Alan Nunnelee (R) (who said that Democratic policies are “more dangerous” than 9/11 or Pearl Harbor).

Also at the Western Conservative Summit, Tancredo said that Obama should be impeached because he’s not doing enough to prevent terrorists from coming into the United States.

After recently asserting that President Obama favors “the black person” by default, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) became political kryptonite for his conservative allies. Republican Colorado congressional candidate Cory Gardner disinvited him from a scheduled fundraiser. The Northern Colorado Tea Party — which is trying to help Republicans win electoral victories in November — also canceled a speech that King was set to deliver this past weekend.

But while King was too hot for the tea party political event, a separate Colorado tea party group — the 9-12 Project Liberty Circle — still invited King to attend their anti-immigration event in Colorado this past weekend. The group hosted a “United We Stand with Arizona!” assemblage where King followed remarks by Tom Tancredo. Speaking in front of a sign that read “Political Correctness = Intellectual Fascism,” King told the gathering of over 100 people that he could build a border wall that would ensure “not [even] a cockroach” could get across.

As is his wont, King had lots of colorful and hateful things to say:

King said Obama has misinformed the public about Arizona’s law.

King said that under only one circumstance does he support amnesty for illegal immigrants: “Every time we give amnesty for an illegal alien, we deport a liberal.”

King was asked by an attendee whether Obama had a concerted strategy to bring more Muslims from abroad into this country. King responded by fanning the conspiracy theory:

QUESTION: I keep reading that Obama keeps bringing small quantities of Muslims into this country. Why can’t Congress stop that?

KING: You know, I don’t know what the basis is of that. I wouldn’t be surprised that that is the real factual basis. I know that the immigration that we have going on, there are a number of different ways that people come into the country. Family reunification is one of them. … I appreciate you making the point. I will try to watch it.

Watch it:

See here for a sampling of King’s hateful and divisive record.

During a speech in 2008, Michelle Obama mentioned her husband’s famous trip to Kenya in 2006 and referred to it as his “home country,” most likely referring to the fact that he has immediate ancestral ties there. Video of the comment recently surfaced on YouTube, sending the far-right birther movement into a frenzy.

Referring to the comments, former GOP congressman and anti-immigrant crusader Tom Tancredo told a Tea Party audience, “If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don’t we just send him back?” Fox News’ Alan Colmes asked Tancredo about his statement on Colmes’ radio show yesterday. “Do you think he was born there?” Colmes asked. “I have no idea, believe me I have no idea,” Tancredo said, adding that whether or not he was born there, “I do not believe Barack Obama loves the same America that I do” because he wants to turn the U.S. into “a socialist system.” Tancredo then placed himself firmly in the birther camp:

COLMES: Do you really believe – you know he was born in Hawaii right?

TANCREDO: I have absolutely no idea where he was born.

COLMES: You’ve seen he was born in Hawaii; he was in two Hawaiian newspapers within two days of his birth.

TANCREDO: Anybody can put an article in a newspaper. Just show me your birth certificate!

Tancredo then claimed that Obama is purposefully withholding his birth certificate in order to fuel birther conspiracies that make the right wing look nuts:

TANCREDO: Now they very well not want to show it because they want to propagate this whole thing that’s going on about birthers. … They may be doing it for that reason; I don’t know why they don’t want anyone to see it. … They want it propagated because you know –

COLMES: It makes your party look nuts!

TANCREDO: Yeah well maybe that’s why they don’t produce document, I don’t know.

Listen here (starting at 8:22):

Fox News’ Glenn Beck has also claimed that “the birther issue” is a conspiracy created by the Obama administration, alleging that “operatives on the left” leaked video of Michelle Obama’s speech to “stir the pot.”

“I could probably fill the better part of my afternoons responding to the general lunacy of somebody like Tom Tancredo,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said of Tancredo’s original comments, adding, “I have no real desire to do that.”

Transcript: Read more

Former Colorado Republican congressman Tom Tancredo is known as a far-right ideologue when it comes to immigration, with fellow Republican Dick Armey lamenting that Tancredo is “alienating” Latinos from the GOP. In 2006, Armey referred to Tancredo as the “cheerleader of jerkiness in the immigration debate.” Tancredo has even joked that he would like to “shut off all immigration.” While Tancredo is, not surprisingly, saying that he supports Arizona going after the issue of undocumented immigration, what’s telling is that even he is worried the law might go too far — showing just how radical the measure really is:

Tancredo applauds the law in that Arizona took control of enforcing laws the federal government hasn’t enforced.

But he questions how police can stop people for any reason. “I do not want people here, there in Arizona, pulled over because you look like [you] should be pulled over,” says Tancredo.

He suspects police in Arizona will only pull people over for breaking the law. But they could already do this before the new law.

Tancredo added that Arizona’s law is what happens when the federal government fails to act. “States eventually get to the point where if things get bad enough, they’ll take matters into their own hands,” he said. “They’ve taken what we can call an extreme measure.”

Today, at a luncheon at the National Press Club on the future of the Republican Party in Washington, FreedomWorks chairman and tea party strategist Dick Armey slammed former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and other anti-immigration activists for “alienating a ‘natural’ constituency [Latinos] that could help the party win elections.” Armey admitted that as House leader, he made sure Tancredo didn’t have a stage to speak on. The Daily Caller reports:

Former Republican House leader Dick Armey said staunch anti-immigration opponents such as Rep. Tom Tancredo are destructive to Republicans — and are alienating a “natural” constituency that could help the party win elections. “Who in the Republican Party was the genius that said that now that we have identified the fastest-growing voting demographic in America, let’s go out and alienate them?” Armey said, referencing Hispanics, during a luncheon in Washington at the National Press Club.

“When I was the majority leader, I saw to it that Tom Tancredo did not get on the stage because I saw how destructive he was,” Armey said of the Colorado congressman and 2008 Republican presidential candidate known for his opposition to illegal immigration. [...]

Armey also said “the Republican Party is the most naturally talented party at losing its natural constituents in the history of the world.” “This party was born with the emancipation proclamation and can’t get a black vote to save its life. How do they do that?”

In an interview with Charlie Rose that aired earlier this month, Armey listed Tancredo (R-CO) as representing part of the “tea party tent” that he feels “uncomfortable” with. In 2006, Armey referred to Tancredo as the “cheerleader of jerkiness in the immigration debate.”

Armey’s remarks have clearly made “nativist-extremist” groups that are trying to exploit the momentum of the tea party movement nervous. Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) quickly came to Tancredo’s defense and started urging its members to attack Armey’s immigration position. According to ALIPAC, Armey has been fighting to “keep the illegal immigration issue out of the Tea Party movement.” On an organizing conference call hosted by NumbersUSA, callers dismissed Armey as not being a “true tea party patriot,” but also sought tips on how to translate their anti-immigrant views to fit the tea party narrative. “We’ll be a whole lot better off if when [sic] we talk about illegal immigrants we leave off the Hispanic-Latino stuff,” advised NumbersUSA executive director Roy Beck.

More on The Wonk Room.

Erin Rosa of Campus Progress reports that NumbersUSA, a “mainstream” immigration restrictionist group with troublesome ties to hate groups, hosted a public conference call last night to discuss “a variety of tactics to thwart an upcoming march on Washington DC by immigrant rights supporters.” One tactic proposed on the call involves portraying women from Mexico as the “new welfare queens”:

CALLER 1: I would like to speak out on something. I feel the new welfare queen in America today is women coming from Mexico with a bunch of babies. So I feel they’re all coming over here and having all these babies, they are the new welfare queen in America…

New people in America today with a lot of babies, ’cause they coming from Mexico having a bunch of babies. And our tax dollars is taking care of them babies, ’cause the mothers are illegal. So to me, we need to speak out about letting them know they’re the new welfare queens in America.

CALLER 2: That was well said brother!

MACDONALD: We will make a note of that. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

CALLER 3: One piece of information would be, they aren’t babies, they’re dependents. Don’t use babies. It’s emotional to them. They have dependents. We have babies.

Callers also complained that tea party organizers are “for the illegals.” Despite acknowledging that FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey funds and inspired the movement itself, Armey was dismissed as not being a “true Tea Party patriot” due to his pro-immigration views. Another caller indicated that tea party organizers specifically asked her to put immigration within the movement’s focus — limited taxation — and asked for more advice on “putting it in their terms.” Roy Beck, Executive Director, responded that “we’ll be a whole lot better off if when [sic] we talk about illegal immigrants we leave off the Hispanic-Latino stuff” and agreed that the tea party’s narrative was the “best way to talk about this.”

However, as long Beck counts on the support of activists who want to equate Mexican mothers with welfare queens, he may have a hard time disassociating his movement from the “Hispanic-Latino stuff.” It says a lot when even Armey perceives anti-immigrant groups as toxic. With his eye quietly on the growing Latino electorate, Armey has explicitly stated that he’s not interested in associating with folks like former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), citing his “harsh and uncharitable and mean-spirited” immigration positions as his number one reason.

Armey isn’t alone. Former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) and Fox News host Glenn Beck are two tea party darlings who have also expressed a need for a more humane immigration policy. Nonetheless, anti-immigrant nativists have done their best to exploit the tea bagger rage that folks like Armey, Palin, and Beck have nurtured. As a result, groups like NumbersUSA have achieved at least some success in recruiting a number of vocal supporters who seek to define both immigrants and “tea party patriots” on their own terms.

Cross-posted on the Wonk Room.