There are times when you have to sit back, take a deep breath, and just stand in awe at the incredibly stupid machinations of our beat-down and stumbling Colorado Republican friends. Apropos --

Tom Tancredo is (tee hee hee) running for President. I can chuckle when I say it because he has no chance, less of a chance than Lyndon LaRouche or the "Clinton Raped Juanita" sandwich board guy. His presidential campaign, like his congressional career, is fixed around the only issue he can articulate, which is an unflinching discomfort with brown people in general and undocumented brown people in particular.

Illegal immigration is a problem, of course, and the proposed remedies run the gamut from reasonable (normalization of status, economic aid to emigrant nations, and border security) to completely insane (ejecting 12+ million fully employed members of the US economy). Most agree that above all it is a federal problem that cannot be properly addressed by local governments. It's people like Tancredo that have made a real solution to the problem difficult, since the last thing a wedge-issue dependent politician wants is a solution...

Since Tancredo is retiring from Congress and soon to lose his national stage as a presidential also-ran, we can pretty well assess the net effectiveness of his single issue career. Disrepute within his own party and support for his quixotic presidential run somewhere south of 1%, the statistical netherworld. Tancredo sits proudly at the unelectable fringe.

You would think that our Colorado Republican friends would take a look at this situation and see a compelling lesson in what not to do if one wants to retain/regain political influence.

You would apparently be giving them too much credit.

Colo. GOP again turns focus to illegal immigrants

Statehouse Republicans want to deny bail to illegal immigrants accused of repeat drunken driving and serious felonies, and require proof of citizenship to vote.

The proposals announced Tuesday were part of the GOP's 2008 legislative package aimed at advancing a state crackdown on illegal immigration...

Democrats argued that feeding, housing and clothing inmates "indefinitely" could eat up money intended for education and other priorities.

Another Republican proposal released ahead of the legislative session starting in January would require jails to determine the immigration status of all detainees when they are booked.

Other measures focus on ensuring only citizens vote in elections.

One would require photo identification at the polls and another would call for proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Republicans concede they don't believe many illegal immigrants are voting, but said that's not the point.

Read in the Greeley Tribune today about what one notoriously anti-immigrant DA thinks of this harebrained idea to pack every already-overcrowded jail in the state with petty criminals. As for the rest, you know, the overt voter suppression stuff based on absolute poppycock, that ought to be pretty easy to understand. After DMVs around the state nearly ground to a halt this year trying to uselessly "verify" perfectly authentic American citizens, it should be obvious that this has very little to do with stopping fictional noncitizen voters, and everything to do with disenfranchising vulnerable citizens and voters. It's what these vote-caging, phone bank flooding, forged-letter county clerking miscreants in the GOP have done for years. GOP strategist Paul Weyrich said it best--when fewer people vote, Republicans win.

It's all certainly disgusting to witness, and surprising to see again after having these craven exploitations of focus-group bigotry dissected and exposed for what they are so many times now. But given how well the Brown Peril platform has worked out for Tom Tancredo, and the way Hispanics are reshaping the electoral landscape in Colorado, you have to wonder if the solution isn't just to keep paying out the rope.