On immigration...

Macsmind has a great post on the immigration debate in the GOP.

I wish to add a few thing further to the debate. I have long disliked Michelle Malkin - particularly through who she chose to associate with on the immigration issue. I've written about this twice before. Suffice it to say she has cited Lawrence Auster and Steve Sailer to bolster her arguments on immigration. Both Sailer and Auster have been called out - and by two of the founders of Redstate.com (tacitus and Ben Domenech), no less. When conservatives are calling people racists, she ought to take note - and not hide behind claims that people are crying xenophobia the way she did when people (many on the right) forcefully disagreed with her on the UAE ports deal. Yet she still lets her column run on a site that not only features Sailer, but which also runs stuff from Jared Taylor as well. In the Age of Google, is there any real excuse to not know who one is working with? I say no.

Sadly, she has allies. As Newsweek reports in a profile of Congressman Tom Tancredo, who has aligned himself with Pat Buchanan on the issue:

Tancredo may not be a household name yet, but he's doing everything he can to change that. As the House and Senate debate the nation's immigration and border-security laws, the four-term Coloradan has positioned himself as the loudest, angriest voice against the estimated 11 million illegal aliens now living in the United States. They are "a scourge that threatens the very future of our nation," he says. He laments "the cult of multiculturalism," and worries about America's becoming a "Tower of Babel." If Republican presidential candidates don't put the problem atop the agenda in 2008, he says he'll run himself, just to force the front runners to talk about it. Not that he thinks he'd win the White House. He declares himself "too fat, too short and too bald" to be president. If the Republicans lose the election because he's too tough on the issue, he says, "So be it."

"So be it" is not an appropriate answer to possibly handing the White House to a Democratic Party that has demonstrated time and time again it is incapable of taking the war on terror seriously. And yet, Tancredo has a following. A big one, particularly at places like FreeRepublic (which is ultimately why I decided to cease participation at that site). The conservative movement's tolerance of Malkin and Tancredo is why it's rapidly leaving me. This country was founded on the premise that all men are created equal. Malkin and Tancredo seem to be hanging out with people who apparently think otherwise.

EDIT: Correcting a link that I messed up earlier.

EDIT 2 (4/2/06): It seems that the link to the denunciation of Lawrence Auster has been hacked.

EDIT 3 (4/10/06): The link appears to have been fixed.