On a Sept. 5 show, KFKA talk-radio host Tom Lucero told Colorado House Minority Leader Brian DelGrosso that government shouldn’t be an obstacle to small business.

Agreed. But talk-radio hosts shouldn’t be an obstacle to small business either. Or to educating our children.

But Lucero established himself as such an obstruction by failing to correct DelGrosso when the new Colorado House Minority leader claimed that Amendment 66, which would raise income tax to support education, would be a burdensome tax on small businesses:

DelGrosso: Well, the reality is, I think it’s mid- to upper eighty percent of all businesses in Colorado are small businesses.  And close to eighty percent of those small businesses are set up either as a sole proprietorship, an LLC, or an S Corp., which means that their taxes that their business makes flows through onto their personal income tax.  So, you will see about 80% of businesses in Colorado see a tax increase as a result of this.  [Listen here.]

But Amendment 66 doesn’t affect Colorado taxes on businesses. It’s a tax on “individuals,  estates, and trusts.”

It’s true that some business owners (like me) choose to take profit from their businesses (e.g., in the form of dividends) and account for it on their personal income tax filings.  But that’s because it’s their income! So they pay personal income tax on it, just like they would income from any other source or employment.

If you make income from a business, whether you own the business or not, you pay income tax. The individual would be taxed, not the business, under Amendment 66, and no one will be taxed twice.

With Lucero apparently agape at the fictitious thought that small businesses could be facing a new tax, DelGrosso went on to say:

DelGrosso: When the taxes go up, not only does that get passed along to the consumer, another way that that affects folks is that affects pay raises for the business.  So maybe, because the taxes went up, I’m not going to be able to give pay raises this year.  I’m not going to be able to hire somebody, or I’m going to have to let somebody go, or I can’t expand.

It’s hard to imagine a small business owner who would look over his personal budget, including the income from his LLC or S Corp, and decide not to invest more in his business due to the tax increase under Amendment 66.

ColoradoCommitsToKids calculates that an individual making the gross median income of $57,000, will pay an additional $211 in tax. A small businessperson who claims gross income on his individual income tax return of $150,000 will pay an additional $24 per week. Double that and it’s still not enough for the greediest capitalist to do much with.

But, collectively, it’s enough to give our kids the opportunity they deserve to succeed on Colorado.

That’s why media figures like Lucero, whose background as a former CU Regent should sensitize him to the educational needs of our kids, should counter DelGrosso’s misinformation with facts. Or have an educator on the show who can.

For a reporter, or even a talk-radio host, when a political operative says something is a “distraction,” then that’s the exact moment to start asking questions.

So Laura Carno, whose organization has raised over $50,000 to recall state Sen. John Morse, invites scrutiny when she says on KFKA’s Amy Oliver Show Aug. 27 (hour two @20:25):

Carno: It’s just been this series of distractions, with the Planned Parenthood mail pieces being the latest distraction. This isn’t about abortion. Supreme Court Justices are not decided in Denver. There’s nothing that’s going to happen here that’s going to harm women. And as a woman…stop trying to manipulate women by saying in 2013 all of these terrible things are going to happen, and they are just not going to.

As I’ve discussed a couple times recently, abortion issues are not a distraction in state politics. Ask a woman just across the CO border in Utah (and 11 other states), if she thinks it’s a pesky distraction to be required, before she can obtain an abortion, to get counseling on the ability of a fetus to feel pain. Read about distractive state abortion laws here and proposed laws in Colorado here.

Carno herself helps run the Colorado Women’s Alliance, whose mission includes supporting “research, education and advocacy in areas of concern to women voters.” Since when is reproductive health, including abortion, not a concern to women?

Still, Carno feels so strongly about eliminating the abortion distraction from the CO Springs recall election that she and KVOR talk-show host Jeff Crank are pressuring CO Springs TV stations to stop running ads stating, accurately, that Republican recall candidate Bernie Herpin supports the personhood “plan” to codify life as beginning at conception and thus outlawing all abortion and common forms of birth control.

One TV station manager has declined to withdraw the ads, and the others aren’t responding, suggesting they agree that the ads are factual.

But this hasn’t stopped lawyers associated with Carno from shooting off an Aug. 27 letter, obtained by your humble blogger today, threatening to sue in an apparent attempt to scare broadcasters and Herpin opponents into stopping a radio ad:

Carno-associated lawyer: “I can quickly draft an injunction complaint based on the false ads…. I can have a lawsuit drafted and served by the close of business today. Your measure of damages is probably on the order of several times the cost to run the ads in order to educate the viewers on the truth.”

Carno implied that KFKA’s Oliver agrees with her that abortion issues are a distraction in the recall election. Regardless, Oliver owes it to women–and the rest of us–to air out why it’s not a legitimate topic to discuss.

On Greeley’s KFKA radio June 7, gun activist Laura Carno asked:

Does [Senate President John Morse] stand by the Colorado Senate Democrats’ tweet that sheriffs, including the Democrats, are standing with criminals for challenging these gun control measures in court?

Host Amy Oliver, who doubles as a staffer for the Independence Institute and is promoted by KFKA as “conservative,  intelligent, and sexy,” jumped in (@22:30):

We’ve talked about that.  They tweeted out, “Sheriffs stand for criminals and against law-abiding citizens.”

Oliver neglected to mention that, in reality, CO Senate Democrats tweeted that pro-gun sheriffs stood “with criminals” because a man who shot a gun at his wife was actually standing (physically with both feet planted) on stage with the Sheriffs, when they announced their lawsuit aiming to overturn new laws banning on magazines holding more than 15 rounds and requiring background checks for most gun purchases and transfers.

As reported by ColoradoPols May 17, Clint Webster was standing with the sheriffs at a May 17 news conference at the Independence Institute.

Webster has a criminal record stemming from threatening his wife and shooting at her and another person.

The Post reported in 2010 that Webster, who was running for State House, “threatened to kill his ex-wife and fired two shots from a Colt semi automatic pistol at her and another person as they drove away from his house.”

Webster “pleaded guilty in 1992 to second-degree assault, a felony, two counts of felony menacing and a misdemeanor assault charge,” according to The Post.

Colorado Springs TV station KRDO made the same mistake in May 29 putting the standing-with-criminals comment in context on its website but completely omitting a reference to Webster and his gun crime in its broadcast story.

This is a serious error, because without the reference to Webster, you’d think Democrats were accusing sheriffs of standing with criminals just because the sheriffs oppose gun-safety laws. This was clearly not the intent of Democrats.

Just so you know, here’s the statement issued by Senate Democrats in response to questions about why sheriffs would stand with criminals.

“The statement was pointing out the irony of the sheriffs protesting legislation that prevents criminals from getting guns while standing with a man who shot at his wife and another unnamed person who was with his wife.

In the photo below, there is Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith (wearing glasses) at the press conference. Next to him is Clint Webster, who was convicted of felony assault and menacing for shooting twice at his wife. So the Sheriffs are quite literally standing with a criminal, and not just any criminal, a domestic violence offender who fired two shots from a Colt semi-automatic handgun at his wife.”

Hard to miss the point, isn’t it?

If you want to hear what the base voters of the Republican Party are thinking, tune to…talk radio!

This is especially true when the radio hosts themselves are former Republican officials and office holders, as is the case with former CU regent Tom Lucero and former Larimer County GOP executive Devon Lentz, who hold forth as co-hosts in the mornings on KFKA radio in Greeley.

Lucero and Lentz were worked up Wednesday morning about immigration, as they’ve been in the past, and their conversation gives us a local window into the reasons the immigration-reform bill seems to have hit a brick fence in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.

Lucero can’t understand why Sen. Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who’s been pushing federal immigration reform, would promote a bill that offers a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“I think if Rubio were serious about it,” said Lucero on air Wed., “he would have come out with just two bills that dealt with employment, and border security. But he got sucked in, in Washington D.C., and now you’re talking about a pathway to citizenship; you’re talking about people with the opportunity to vote within ‘x’ number of years.”

“We’re rewarding people that are here illegally!” responded Lentz.

“Exactly!” said Lucero

“The rules are in place for a reason!” Lentz added. “Enforce ‘em, and let’s move forward from there!  Not change them!  Because somebody has violated rules for ten years, doesn’t make it acceptable. Let’s make an exception to the rule for them?”

Lucero and Lentz (like Rep. Cory Gardner) clearly aren’t happy with the bipartisan Senate proposal to ramp up border security, with specific milestones, as comprehensive immigration reform moves forward.

“Let’s start with border security,” Lucero told his listeners, who you could almost see nodding out there in conservative radioland. “Keep those out that want to come in, and those that are here, they’re here.  So then we deal with it after the border is secure.  First, first – first step has to be border security.”

Is Rubio dividing the GOP, wondered Lucero and Lentz.

Lucero thinks Rubio has put Republicans in an “awkward position.”

Lucero feels the pressure that Rubio puts on him and Tea-Party Republicans: “If Marco Rubio supports it, why can’t you?  Marco Rubio is quote/unquote one of those Tea Party renegade senators in the U.S. Senate and if a conservative like Rubio can support it, why can’t you?”

“I don’t know that [Rubio is] dividing the Party,” Lucero said on the radio, “but he’s not making it easy for Republicans out there that don’t support comprehensive immigration reform–Republicans who support ‘secure the borders, all borders, all ports of entry,’ and who want an employment verification system. Yeah, Marco Rubio is making it difficult on those of us who believe in that. That’s my conclusion.”

You get the feeling that some Republicans are trying to sneak Hispanics into the GOP tent through the back tent flaps, for fear that welcoming them though the tent’s front door will offend the dwindling number of Republicans already in the tent.

That’s what I was thinking when KFKA morning show host Devon Lentz insulted the entire country of Mexico last week, and Rep. Cory Gardner, who was a guest on the program, acted as if he’d heard nothing rude or inappropriate.

“We’re going to deal with this immigration thing,” said Lentz, who’s a former Larimer Country GOP official. “Except that, how do we also keep from advertising in countries like Mexico that when you come here, here’s how to get on the food stamps, here’s how you take advantage of this system, and get housing assistance, and food assistance?  How do we at least keep from advertising how to take advantage of our system?”

Who knew the hard-working people from Mexico are out to freeload on America? Are Italians similarly inclined? Brits?

Rather than throw that question back at Lentz or, perhaps, even praise Hispanics’ current contributions to our nation, Gardner said:

“Well, and those are questions that are being asked regularly to the administration about how they’re doing it, and what they’re doing, and how they’re marketing various programs.”

Gardner has said he wants Hispanics in the GOP tent, but with Lentz lurking around inside, and Gardner refusing to stand up for a country like Mexico, will Hispanics want to enter?

It’s a question reporters should discuss with the Gardners of the GOP. Can they make progress if they don’t stand up for Hispanics when fellow Republicans insult them? Kind of like John McCain did when he defended Obama after a woman said he was an Arab she couldn’t trust.

On the radio, Gardner told Lentz: “But I think we all recognize that the values that make this country great.  And those are the two values that I talk about that we have to balance in any Immigration reform.  And that is the first, balance the first value—that this country is and must remain a beacon of hope for the world.  And the second value, that we are a nation of laws. And so, any immigration policy must meet those two stated values.”

Got it. Beacon of hope. Nation of laws.

How does that square with making sure not to tell Mexicans how to get food stamps and housing assistance?

Even before the bill requiring universal background checks on gun purchases clears the State Legislature, as expected, the head of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, Dudley Brown, is promising to challenge the law in court.

No surprise there from an organization that puts “no compromise” atop its website. But it deserves reporting because of the sweeping impact that Brown says he lawsuit could have.

Brown says his organization will use a legal strategy that would not only overturn the would-be universal-background-check law, but also the existing Colorado Brady Act, which requires limited background checks. So all background checks would be eliminated.

Brown made these comments on KFKA radio’s Scooter McGee show last week:

Scooter (@13:20): Unfortunately, the fight is not working. They are going to pass this. Conservatives are now saying, well, even if it passes, it won’t work in the courts. Well even if it goes–

Brown: I disagree. Look, I was quoted in the McDonald decision by the United States Supreme Court, directly quoted by Justice Alito in the majority decision. I will tell ya that some of those decisions, unfortunately, both Heller and MacDonald, justify gun control. You’ve been told a lie, if you think that Heller or MacDonald, are going to overturn any of these bills. I don’t believe they are. Is it possible that we could overturn the expansion of Brady in the universal background checks because of Article II, Section 13, that says ‘the right of no person to keep and bear arms shall be called in question?’ Well, we’re going to try. But it’s not just going to just repeal that bill. It’s going to repeal the entire Colorado Brady Act, if it’s actually successful. Because we don’t believe that you should be required to go through a background check. The truth is, the NRA isn’t going to supoort us on that. They never have. They’ve actually been in favor of Brady checks–and expand Brady checks, including mental health provisions. And here’s a news flash to you, Scooter, if they have mental health provisions, you’ll never be able to pass a Brady check, because they will call you crazy.

Scooter: News to you, Dudley?

Brown: So will they me. So will they Kevin Blake, who is listening. So they will most gun owners.

Scooter: They are going to do it to all of us, and that is ultimately the crux of this…

I’m hoping McGee treats his conservative audience to a conversation with the NRA about its legal plans if the background-checks bill passes, and he invites Brown to keep things interesting.

Conservative talk radio is reverberating with misrepresentation, confusion, and falsehoods about the gun safety legislation moving through the State Legislature.

Now would be a good time for fact-based listeners to call into these fear-based shows to straighten out the hype-based hosts and their back-scratching guests.

For example, Sen. Kevin Lundberg said the following on KFKA’s Amy Oliver Show Feb. 11:

“You know, I remember decades ago, somebody said, ‘I will not give up my gun rights, you know, until you pry my cold dead hands away from it.’  We all thought, ‘Well, That will never happen.’ Well, boy, we are so close, so close to that.”

I hope Sen. Lundberg isn’t digging a bunker in preparation for his own death in a final righteous gun battle, which he believes to be “so close.”

In reality, no proposed bill in the Colorado Legislature would make it illegal for Lundberg to own a gun. Ditto for any law-abiding Republican talk-show host, despite the cries you’re hearing on the airwaves.

Lundberg continued:

“PBS NewsHour asked me: ‘Can’t you find a middle ground?’  And my answer was, ‘Yeah, it’s what we have in place now.  We have a concealed/carry law. We don’t have a Vermont-style carry, where every citizen is allowed to carry, just by virtue of being a legal citizen.  But So we have a permit system.’  Okay.  I can accept that as being a middle ground.  But the Left believes the only solution is pretty much a total ban on everything.  And so they’re just going for everything they can get.  It’s a very, very extreme position.”

Heading toward similar extremes, House Minority Leader Mark Waller told KHOW’s Michael Brown Wed.:

“And there’s no evidence that universal background checks, in any way, enhance public safety.”

No evidence? Zero?

Last month, the Washington Post’s Brad Plumer interviewed a University of Chicago Professor who studied the issue in-depth and concluded that universal background checks would likely enhance public safety, by requiring checks on the gun buyers who aren’t currently required to get them (up to 40% of gun purchases. The NRA believes the figure is 10%, but, still, Ludwig’s argument, below, still holds up.)

Ludwig cited studies in the late 1980s showing that 80% of people who committed a crime with a handgun acquired it from an unlicensed gun dealer and therefore didn’t have a background check.

“Most people who own guns are middle-class, law-abiding citizens,” he says. “If you tell them to do a background check, I think they’ll do it voluntarily.” And for those who prefer to evade the law, the government might have to provide more resources for police to do undercover gun buys on the secondary market—in order to ensure compliance. “That’s never going to be perfect, but anything you can do to tighten the secondary market will help.”

That’s fact-based, common sense. It makes a good starting point for a reasonable discussion on costs and benefits of background checks.

Waller’s and Lundberg’s hyperbole sends us in the opposite direction and should be called out by talk-radio hosts–or you, if you listen in.

You probably heard that GOP strategist Karl Rove pissed off lots of fellow conservatives this week when he unveiled a plan to prop up Republicans deemed more electable by Rove, when Rove’s candidates are under attack in primaries from more conservative upstarts

The New York Times Jeff Zeleny reports:

The strategist Karl Rove and his allies are under withering criticism for creating the Conservative Victory Project, their effort to help rebuild the Republican Party and win control of the Senate. Their pledge to take sides in primary races in an effort to pick candidates they see as more electable has set off a fierce backlash from conservative activists.

“This is not Tea Party versus establishment,” Mr. Rove said, defending his new project on Fox News. “I don’t want a fight.”

Yet a fight has broken out this week across the conservative media spectrum, with Mr. Rove drawing the ire of Tea Party leaders and commentators who suggest that he and other party strategists are the problem, rather than the solution, to the challenges facing Republicans.

Here in Colorado on Wed., former Larimer Country GOP Chair Tom Lucero reflected the sentiments of other conservative talkers when he told his listeners on KFKA’s “AM Colorado:”

“I think what Karl Rove is doing is absolutely, incredibly wrong-headed…The beltway politicians, those guys are telling Steve King, ‘You better not run for that Senate Seat in the state of Iowa. We will get behind the other guy.’ …I think Steve King would be a great U.S. Senator.”

Added Lucero’s co-host Devon Lentz, also a former Larimer County GOP official:

“Well, we’ve seen it in CO, when the establishment tries to vet the candidates, there is a lot of backlash, and that never ever benefits the party as a whole.”

Lentz continued on air that it’s unfair for the Republican establishment to focus on derailing conservative candidates because “any candidate can say something stupid.”

Lucero, a former CU Regent, responded:

“Thank you! Exactly! That’s the point. That’s why people are upset right now with Karl Rove and this group, trying to say, ‘We will determine the candidate most electable in a primary…’

But the reality of it is, –Let’s be honest about this, candidates all over the place — Joe Biden does it all the time, but the mainstream liberal media protects him. It’s when a Todd Akin or a Richard Mourdock says something stupid that the mainstream liberal media jumps all over it and tries to bury those candidacies. So there’s a double standard when it comes to ‘opening mouth and inserting foot.'”

Lucero then referenced an article by Matt Lewis in the Daily Caller, titled “Really Want to Stop the Next Todd Akin:? Don’t Attack Conservative Candidates, Train Them.”

Lucero liked Lewis’ suggestion that Rove and Company offer basic candidate training to all Republicans on how to answer questions, talk to the press, and not make “idiotic” comments like Missouri’s Todd Akin made [about “legitimate rape,” your recall].

“Wouldn’t that be the better solution than starting an intra-party war between conservatives and establishment?” Lucero asked.

Everyone remembers Gov. Rick Perry’s magnificent “Oops moment,” during the Republican presidential primary, when he suggested cutting three, count ’em, three federal agencies: the 1) Education Department, 2) Commerce Department, and 3) ???????????????.

Who remembers the last one?

It was the Energy Department!

It looks like Rep. Cory Gardner would have been able to get the words “Energy Department” out of his mouth if he’d been in Perry’s shoes, because our Congressman from the 4th Congressional District has the Energy Department on his own list for possible elimination.

On KFKA radio’s Amy Oliver Show Tuesday, Gardner suggested that the federal Energy Department is “something we ought to look at and see whether or not they are actually justified to be there anyway.”

OLIVER: Give me your thoughts on – and I’m sure you’ve heard—you served with him when you were in Legislature and he was the governor of the state of Colorado, the idea that Governor Bill Ritter is on the short list for Energy Secretary.

GARDNER: [chuckles] Governor Ritter is a nice guy. And I’m sure, you know, he is somebody you’d love to have a beer with. I was never invited, I don’t think, [laughing] to have a beer with him, but if you were I’m sure he’d be a nice guy to have a beer with! But I don’t think he’s the right person for the Secretary of Energy. In fact, Energy Department is something we ought to look at and see whether or not they are actually justified to be there anyway. So, let’s have a conversation about what we can do to consolidate and eliminate some of these spending programs, especially programs that aren’t working because of Solyndras and other wasted program spending. And I don’t think Bill Ritter is the right one to lead that conversation.

Full transcript and audio here.

You’d think KFKA host Amy Oliver, who rails against federal agencies like the EPA, would have been ecstatic, after hearing Gardner’s comments. I thought she might have said something like, “I was dying when Rick Perry couldn’t spit out ‘Energy Department,’ and you did it so eloquently, with no oops or hesitation. Thank you.”

But she stayed calm, like she did in 2011 when Gardner suggested on Oliver’s program that the Department of Transportation should be eliminated. He later changed his tune.

Oliver asked Gardner if there was sufficient political will to eliminate the Energy Department:

OLIVER: …I know that there isn’t the political will to eliminate the Department of Energy, even though I would love that. Is there ever any conversation about at least, not just reducing the amount of growth, but simply cutting a department’s budget?

GARDNER: That’s exactly what I meant by saying a decrease in the rate of increase isn’t enough. We have got to cut department spending, and I think that yes, if you look at the budget that we passed out of the House, we eliminated entire agencies and programs. Now, there were conversations early on last year about eliminating the Department of Commerce, or consolidating Department of Commerce with various functions.

It’s no fun to talk about specifics when you’ve got the budget ax out, but right then, at that point in the interview, would have been a great time for Oliver to get specific with Gardner about what Energy Department programs might be cut.

The renewable energy research budget? Nuclear weapons production and maintenance? Energy conservation? Fossil fuel and nuclear research programs? All of it?

Oliver knows a fair amount about energy issues. She had a great moment to trot out an intelligent question, or a specific question on what she’d cut, but she failed us, leaving the job to a reporter who cares about meaningful public-policy debate, not just bloviation.

Oops.

I wrote earlier this week about how hard it will be for conservative talk-radio hosts to modify their views, even if pressured by more moderate GOP factions to do so. Here’s an example of how this looks on the air:

About a month and a half before the election, on KFKA’s morning radio show, hosts Devon Lentz and Tom Lucero, who are prominent Larimer County Republicans, were more than happy to plug Dennis Lynch’s underground film, arguing, as Lynch put it, that people aren’t crossing the U.S.-Mexico border just “to cut your lawn” but “to cut your throats.”

The tone of the Greeley radio show changed last week when Lentz and Lucero talked to Michael Barrera of the conservative Libre Initiative, which is advocating that Republicans be nicer to Hispanics.

Barrera complained to the talk-show hosts about the nastiness of some Republicans when it comes to immigration:

Barrera: Some of the rhetoric that’s coming from some of the folks on this issue has been pretty bad. Like, you had a guy – a state legislator out of Kansas that came out and said, “We ought to shoot these illegal immigrants like pigs off a helicopter.” That’s horrible!

I would have asked if the “cut-your-throats” comment and Lynch’s fear-mongering movie, which had been so warmly received by the talk show hosts, was in the same ballpark, but who am I?

Barrera: The only thing that [Hispanic voters] did hear, you know, from candidate Romney, who I think is a good man, but you know, mainly his words regarding immigration that they remember were “self-deportation”. They saw him embrace Arpaio [Barrera pronounces it “Air-A-PEE-O] out of Arizona. They saw him embrace Kolbeck out of Arizona. [He] embraced Arizona law which many Hispanics felt was a bad law for immigration. So, they saw him embrace all these things, rather than embrace something like the DREAM Act. When that came up he actually attacked other candidates for supporting the DREAM Act. And even when Rubio tried to come up with his own act, again, he didn’t embrace that, he embraced these other [inaudible]. And so this is what they saw, this is what they remember. And when you feel like you’re not being — you feel like you’re dealing with a candidate you can’t trust, or a candidate doesn’t care about you, you’re not going to vote for him.

Lentz did not say she gets mad when she sees all the Spanish words in the packaging department at Wal-Mart. That’s what she said when Lynch was on the show before the election.

But she asked a good question, saying she thought jobs and the economy were the top issues for Hispanics, not immigration.

Lentz: … in my mind, it’s not just the DREAM Act, it’s continuing to let anybody come into our country that’s going to affect our jobs and our economy because it’s more people we need to supply jobs to and it’s a bigger drain on our entitlement programs, in some cases. How do you make that balance and how do the Republicans back up and say, ‘Are jobs the most important thing to you, because if we don’t have jobs, we don’t have jobs for anybody.’

Barrera said Republicans have to get the “immigration issue behind us,” but his amorphous suggestion of allowing undocumented immigrants to work here legally, as long as they aren’t criminals, didn’t seem to grab Lucero or Lentz.

They didn’t say, “That was phenomenal,” as Lucero had told Lynch when he was fear-mongering about undocumented immigrants just a few weeks back.

And that’s the problem Republicans will have going forward with talk-radio hosts and the GOP base that listens to them.

The problem will be exacerbated by people like Tom Tancredo, who’s a star guest on many Colorado talk shows where he loves to say stuff like:

“We can’t let those who actually believe the answer is comprehensive immigration reform…aka massive amnesty…take us back down that path again. We must stop them cold, as we did before–because we know that will be the end of the line for America,” Tancredo emailed his supporters Nov. 16, as reported by Fox 31’s Eli Stokols.

Tancredo, you recall, was a talk-radio host in Colorado Springs for a long stint after he ran for President, on an anti-immigration platform, and he still loves to make the talk-radio rounds–or any rounds where a microphone is present.

But even if Tancredo disappears, whose ideas do you think are more likely to win over the talk-radio hosts and audience, Barrera’s? Or Tancredo’s?