You cannot spout—out of one side of your rank blowhole—that you are "passionate on [immigration issues] because the nature of this country is one that is good-hearted and compassionate"; that "Our people are compassionate"; and that "The system we have today is not a compassionate system," and then, once you have doubled your support from the Latino community (21% to 40% in less than a decade), enact a bill that calls for "fencing and state-of-the-art technology to halt the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, requires employers to verify the legal status of employees, and calls for hiring and training 1,000 port-of-entry inspectors and 1,500 K-9 border-control teams." Not the same person backing the two contradictory stances, but for sure, the same party.

This latter stance is just what Racist Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) has proposed, in a bill that passed the House 239-182. Tancredo's position (along with Sensenbrenner's HR4437), which opposes Bush's strategy, is causing a major fracture in the GOP. Tancredo clearly believes (and he uses a 1907 Roosevelt quote to make it known explicitly) that if you wave any flag but an American one you are hostile, that if you speak any language than English, you are being unAmerican, and that crossing the border ought to be a felony, and retroactively. Tancredo is not hesitant about whipping up the uglier face of humanity in his quest for a Whiter nation, because after all, he feels that Mexican immigrants are "a scourge that threatens the very future of our nation." (Do you think Tancredo wants, also, to regress civil rights to a 1907 attitude? I don't doubt it, as the NAACP wasn't founded until 1909.)

Bush and Tancredo seem to be in opposite camps, and Bush in the weaker one. Key Republican planners were quite clear, approaching the 2004 elections. GOP strategists knew it was important to cash in on the Hispanic Evangelical vote and saw it as "essential to Bush's re-election and to their party's long-range prospects." But with Tancredo's runaway train of hate, and with many others using the issue to frighten Americans, this strategy is in grave danger.

Evidenced most recently in the exodus of Hispanic Evangelicals from their (misplaced) support in the GOP, and spearheaded by Rev. Luis Cortes Jr., one of todays most prominent Hispanic Evangelicals. Cortes is is at the helm of Esperanza USA, the self-proclaimed "nation's largest Hispanic faith-based community- development organization." Cortes' Esperanza USA controls Nueva Esperanza, "a Philadelphia-based network of social services, including a charter high school, a community college, and a $28 million economic development program."

Originally, Cortes was targeted by GOP operatives as the man at the crux of their effort to gain a solid fifth of the Hispanic voting community, who belong to the Evangelical community. It's no secret that his support was crucial in attaining the growing support for Republicans. Until now. As this writer has been especially insistent in noting, Republicans are best at using their own inherent racism to stoke and exploit the latent fears and ignorance that can be found in too much of America. And as of late, the racist anti-Mexican rhetoric has exponentially multiplied.

Over the past year, in a shift frightening to GOP operatives, Cortes has become an outspoken critic of the House Republican leadership, warning of a massive exodus of Latinos from the GOP. 'The Far Right is using rhetoric to frame [immigration] in a manner that convinces the majority of Americans that the only alternative is to hunt down and punish these 'drug-dealing people.' [Republican House leaders] have gone too far, a sign that they are desperate and have no true agenda for our country. They should be ashamed, and as a person of faith I have to believe that this will backfire, as it is clearly an act of cowardice.'"

Cortes, to National Journal.

And Cortes is right. This racebaiting and fearmongering is an act of both cowardice and laziness. And with every politician and media outlet using the specter of Mexican immigrants to terrify middle America, many families and American Mexicans are at risk. Tancredo's caucus web site has done nothing to bring a voice of reason or humanity to the discussion, yet this kind of primitive hatemongering is supported by too many.

The caucus Web site has outraged many Hispanics by spotlighting dangers supposedly posed by illegal immigration:

'Sister Helen Chaska was murdered in late summer 2002 by being strangled with her rosary beads -- the beads were found imbedded in her neck. She was also raped.... Her accused murderer is Maximiliano Esparza, who is in the United States illegally';

'2 in 3 U.S. Teens Snubbed for Summer Jobs in Favor of Cheap Immigrant Labor';

'The Kissing Bug (Vinchuca) attacks a person in the face while he or she is asleep by 'kissing' them in the fold of the cheek. Within time, the parasite races into the bloodstream to destroy the heart and other organs.... It kills 50,000 people per year south of the border';

'Experts Fear Open Immigration Could Result in Tuberculosis Plague in the United States.'"

Evangelical Hispanics turning away from GOP, MSNBC

Wise and kind leaders would know that this is being blown out of proportion by Sensenbrenner, Tancredo, Malkin, Dobbs, Gibson, Robinson and the usual pack of White rats (Robinson and Malkin both honorary members), who fill their ulcerated bellies by nibbling away at the sanity and reason of Americans, and wise and kind leaders would do all they could to stem the mania that always results when you make the White clan fear for their tribe. Wise and kind leaders know that this will all pass, and that there will be a new boogeyman on the horizon, always a new boogeyman on the horizon. Wise and kind leaders would not wait in the wings while people are hurt, hateful rhetoric is propagated, and a shortage of workers panics produce farmers.

Will we ever be gifted with wise and Kind leaders in America? That is a question that only time can answer. Clearly, Hispanic Evangelicals have already made up their minds about the GOP.