In 2005, Greenwald defended Tancredo against those calling him out for his racist views. [View all]

[ProSense]

The interesting thing is that in the preface to his book, Greenwald explained why he dropped support of the Iraq war (http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023362984) and turned against Bush. Here he mentions launching his blog.

In October 2005, I started my own blog, and chose as its name "Unclaimed Territory"—a declaration that my particular political passion has no grounding in any partisan loyalties or ideologies. Instead, my passion emanates almost entirely from a fervent and deeply held belief in the supremacy of our constitutional principles and the corresponding duty of every American citizen to defend these liberties when they are under assault. Although I lacked any specific plan, I created my blog with the goal of finding a way to discuss and publicize just how radical and extreme the Bush administration had become. My blog quickly grew far beyond anything I imagined, with a daily readership of 10,000 within three months.

http://www.bookbrowse.com/excerpts/index.cfm?fuseaction=printable&book_number=1812

The following two months he posted his views on "illegal" immigration and his defense of Tancredo.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

The GOP fights itself on Illegal Immigration

<...>

The parade of evils caused by illegal immigration is widely known, and it gets worse every day. In short, illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone. Few people dispute this, and yet nothing is done.

A substantial part of the GOP base urgently wants Republicans, who now control the entire Federal Government, to take the lead in enforcing our nation’s immigration laws. And yet the GOP, despite its unchallenged control, does virtually nothing, infuriating this sector of its party. The White House does worse than nothing; to the extent it acts on this issue at all, it is to introduce legislation designed to sanction and approve of illegal immigration through its “guest worker” program, a first cousin of all-out amnesty for illegal immigrants.

GOP inaction when it comes to illegal immigration is at once mystifying and easily explainable. There is a wing of the party – the Wall St. Journal/multinational corporation wing – which loves illegal immigration because of its use as a source of cheap labor. And while that wing of the party is important because of the financial support it provides, it is a distinct minority when it comes to electoral power.

<...>

But one of the most disturbing and destructive aspects of illegal immigration is that it is illegal. Indeed, that is the precise attribute which separates good immigration from bad immigration. Why should Republicans, or anyone, shy away from pointing out that illegal immigration, among its many evils, is “illegal”? That is just absurd. Moreover, it is precisely the fact that illegal immigrants enter the country illegally that spawns justifiable resentment, not only among large clusters of middle-of-the-road voters, but also among the very legal immigrant population about which Sanchez is so concerned. Emphasizing the "illegal" part of this problem is what Republicans need to do more of, not less.

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http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/11/gop-fights-itself-on-illegal.html

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Yelling "racist" as an "argument" in the immigration debate

All in a single one-line post, Oliver Willis manages to perfectly illustrate the cheapest, most intellectually dishonest -- and, for those who wield it in the immigration debate, the most self-destructive -- form of argumentation.

Willis references a post by Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly, which quotes a letter from anti-illegal-immigration Congressman Tom Tancredo to his supporters in which Rep. Tancredo asks for help in what Tancredo calls the "struggle to preserve our national identity against the tide of illegal immigrants flooding the United States." In response to Tancredo’s letter, Willis snidely writes:

Hey, Tom Tancredo . . . Just say "white power" and get it off your chest.

So, there’s Willis' self-satisfied decree, in its vapid entirety. According to Willis (and many of Drum's commentators, if not Drum himself), anyone who believes that it’s important for a nation to be comprised of citizens who have at least some joint national allegiance and a minimal common foundation -- never mind a common language in which they can communicate with one another -- is a White Supremacist bigot.

Leave aside the political stupidity of labeling as bigots and racists a huge portion of the electorate which is becoming increasingly concerned about illegal immigration and which agrees with Tancredo’s sentiments. More important than the political self-destruction, Willis’ cheap name-calling -- a crude tactic wielded by many like him -- is substantively vacuous.

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http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/yelling-racist-as-argument-in.html

Tancredo was and still is a racist.

Former Congressman Tancredo to Address White Supremacists
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/06/19/former-congressman-tancredo-to-address-white-supremacists/