CARROLL — As he surged to the top of two national polls Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich spent nearly three hours at the Santa Maria Winery in Carroll on Monday, speaking with voters, taking questions, signing books and screening a movie he co-developed celebrating Pope John Paul II.

Gingrich also conducted a 10-minute interview with The Carroll Daily Times Herald and La Prensa, an Iowa Spanish-language newspaper, before going on air nationally with Fox News’ Sean Hannity from a makeshift, temporary studio on the west side of the winery.

It was Gingrich’s second visit to Carroll in the campaign cycle, and momentum had turned decidedly in his favor in the hours before he addressed nearly 200 people at John and Rose Guinan’s local winery.

Public Policy Polling on Monday showed Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia, with 28 percent support in national GOP primary surveying. Businessman Herman Cain was in second at 25 percent with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney garnering 18 percent, according to the polling firm.

Another national poll of Republican voters released Monday — this one from CNN — had Romney at 24 percent, Gingrich at 22 percent and Cain at 14 percent in the race for the GOP presidential nomination.

“This is a year when substance and solutions matter,” Gingrich said. “I think like the conversation tonight, I don’t give them slogans. I don’t try to make them feel better with things that are patently untrue. And I think people are really looking for a leader who will work with them to develop real solutions.”

Newt Gingrich met with GOP caucusgoers at Santa Maria Winery in Carroll.

That considered, Gingrich said the series of nationally televised Republican presidential debates has helped his campaign, resurrected it really, because voters can assess him directly.

“Frankly, without the debates my campaign would have been dead because the news media wouldn’t have covered it, and I couldn’t have raised the kind of money that Mitt Romney and Rick Perry could raise,” Gingrich said.

One of the former House speaker’s major strengths is now coming to the fore with voters, he said.

“I’m the only national candidate running,” Gingrich said. “I’ve led a national movement to win control of the House.”

Gingrich noted that he played a key role with welfare reform and federal budget work in the 1990s.

“None of the other candidates have that type of background,” Gingrich said. “I think gradually it began to sink in to people.”

The Public Policy Polling group’s survey clearly shows that Gingrich’s momentum draws heavily on Republicans who have abandoned Cain, a former Godfather’s CEO who faces allegations of sexual harassment and has stumbled on foreign-policy questions in recent days.

In one instance, Cain clearly did not know that China has nuclear capabilities. The Daily Times Herald asked Gingrich if Cain’s lack of knowledge about a world superpower on a life-and-death military issue should be disqualifying for White House service.

“I think voters have to decide that,” Gingrich said. “It’s not my job to decide it. Different people have different strengths. Herman Cain is a very attractive and very articulate businessperson who has a very impressive background in business. He doesn’t have a background in government. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses.”

La Prensa asked Gingrich’s reaction to an often-repeated line from Cain about constructing a border fence with Mexico so that it can electrocute immigrants, and possibly even snare them in an associated moat stocked with alligators.

“It was a bad idea,” Gingrich said.

He added, “I hope he was joking. I’d like to think he was joking.”

Gingrich then turned to his own immigration plans, calling for control of the border in a way that is “human and practical.”

“I’m working on an immigration program which is firm but at the same time has a human aspect to it that I think most Hispanic Americans would appreciate,” Gingrich said.

Earlier, in a question-and-answer session with voters in the winery, Gingrich said he wanted to impose severe penalties for employers who hired undocumented workers. Moreover, he put forward a plan modeled on the Selective Service System used by the military in World War II in which local committees of citizens could help determine the immigration status of a city’s illegal residents based on factors like how long they’ve lived in the area, family roots and contributions socially and in business.

Gingrich said rhetoric about deporting all illegal immigrants isn’t realistic.

“I think it’s very unlikely the American people are going to break up families,” Gingrich said.

In other remarks to the audience, Gingrich said he is “deeply opposed to raising taxes” in a recession. He said opening up offshore drilling in the United States is a way to boost revenue through royalties. Gingrich also had strong comments on education, saying schools too often seek to provide students with unearned self-esteem and academic diplomas or degrees.

“None of the Founding Fathers would think that made any sense because it’s fundamentally a lie,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich, a former history professor at West Georgia College, reminded the audience that President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for Americans to pray on the radio during the hours after D-Day and at other points in World War II.

A president today would be challenged if he took such measures, Gingrich said.

“We’d probably have an ACLU lawsuit against the president,” Gingrich said.

In the interview with The Daily Times Herald Gingrich said he wants to take federal money away from Planned Parenthood and funnel it into an adoption-promotion program.

“I come out of a background where my father was adopted and I was adopted,” Gingrich said. “We have a very deep sense that this culture has made it all too easy to end a life than to find a way to encourage a life.”

Much of the crowd at the winery stayed after Gingrich’s remarks to watch the movie “Nine Days That Changed the World” about Pope John Paul II’s historic nine-day pilgrimage to Poland in June 1979 created a revolution of conscience that transformed Poland and fundamentally reshaped the spiritual and political landscape of the 20th Century.

Gingrich and his wife, Callista, a former congressional staffer and graduate of Luther College in Decorah, along with a Polish, American, and Italian cast, explore what transpired during these nine days that moved the Polish people to renew their hearts, reclaim their courage, and free themselves from the shackles of Communism. The film was produced in partnership with Citizens United Productions.

Iowa law enforcement agencies reported 17 hate crimes in 2010, a small fraction of the 6,628 reported nationwide, according to a new report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Ten of the crimes in Iowa were based on race; five on sexual orientation; and two on ethnicity.

Nationwide, 47 percent of incidents were racially motivated; 20 percent based on religious bias; 19 percent on sexual-orientation; and 13 percent on ethnicity or national origin. Hate crimes from 2009 to 2010 remained steady.

A total of 221 Iowa law enforcement agencies provided data to the FBI, with 14 agencies submitting incident reports. Two hate crimes were reported in Des Moines, the state’s largest city; two in Davenport; two in Bettendorf; and one each at the University of Iowa and Iowa State University.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s alternative Supplemental Poverty Measure — “a new measure of poverty to complement the official measure,” released this week — shows that 49.1 million Americans were poor in 2010, “more than the 46.6 million using the official definition of poverty.”

According to the Census Bureau, the Supplemental measure ”is intended to better reflect contemporary social and economic realities and government policy effects and thus provide a further understanding of economic conditions and trends.” The official poverty measure estimates poverty rates by looking at a family’s or an individual’s cash income.

A Pew Hispanic Center report released Tuesday indicates that, “compared with the official measure, SPM figures released by the Census Bureau show a higher national poverty rate for 2010, 16 percent, compared with the official poverty rate of 15.2 percent.”

A Census Bureau report (PDF) shows that the official poverty measures in use since the 1960s:

• [do] not reflect the effects of key government policies that alter the disposable income available to families and, hence, their poverty status
• do not adjust for rising levels and standards of living that have occurred since 1965
• [do] not take into account variation in expenses that are necessary to hold a job and to earn income — expenses that reduce disposable income like transportation costs for getting to work, the increasing costs of child care for working families resulting from increased labor force participation of mothers
• [do] not take into account variation in medical costs across population groups depending on differences in health status and insurance coverage and does not account for rising health care costs as a share of family budgets
• use family size adjustments that do not take into account important changes in family situations, including payments made for child support and increasing cohabitation among unmarried couples
• do not adjust for geographic differences in prices across the nation, although there are significant variations in prices across geographic areas

According to the Hispanic Center, the alternative measure includes “medical expenses, tax credits, non-cash government benefits (such as food stamps, housing subsidies and school lunch programs) and cost-of-living adjustments for different geographic areas.”

The Pew Hispanic report adds that, “among the nation’s largest racial and ethnic groups, poverty rates using the alternative measure are higher than official poverty rates for Hispanics, non-Hispanic whites and Asians, but are lower for blacks.”

According to the report issued by the Pew Hispanic Center, using the Supplemental Poverty Measure, the poverty rate in 2010 for various groups was:

• Hispanics: 28.2 percent, higher than the official poverty rate of almost 27 percent
• Whites: 11 percent, higher than the official poverty rate of 10 percent
• Asians: almost 17 precent, higher than the official poverty rate of 12.1 percent
• Blacks: 25.4 percent, lower than the official poverty rate of 27.5 percent

Voters in Iowa Senate District 18 head to the polls today to decide between Republican Cindy Golding and Democrat Liz Mathis. But phones in the district have been ringing for days as the candidates and third-party supporters hope to sway and influence voters in their direction.

Below are a few audio samples of what residents in SD 18 have been hearing. They are arranged in the order that they were received by voters.

This initial clip appears to be one of the first robocalls that went out to voters and features a local teacher who explains why she is supporting Mathis.

This robocall, which began late last week, features former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is calling on behalf of the Citizens United Political Victory Fund in support of Golding.

Our third call is also in support of Golding and was paid for by the Republican Party of Iowa. The female caller attacks Mathis’ “hidden” support for repeal of the state’s right to work law and, apparently taking a page from 2012 GOP controversies, implies that, if Mathis is elected, state tax money will be used to send illegal immigrants to college.

The final robocall in our sample began circulation Tuesday morning and features candidate Mathis talking about her plans for education and encouraging voters to head to the polls before they close at 9 p.m.

Generally, the calls coming into to SD 18 households have mirrored numerous direct mailings. That is, the Mathis campaign and the Iowa Democratic Party are largely doing outreach that focuses on Mathis and her proposals. Mailers and these most recent calls from those the right have employed much more of an offensive strategy.

For those interested in how the election is going, the Linn County Auditor’s Office has developed a special election day page that provides polling place information as well as voter turnout. As of 11 a.m., roughly 6.5 percent of all registered voters in the county had visited their polling place. A more accurate gauge of voter interest might be to look only at the precincts in the city of Marion, which is the largest city within SD 18. During the 2009 elections, which were largely not controversial, 418 people (about 2 percent) had cast their ballot by 11 a.m. For this election, 2,134 voters (about 8.5 percent) visited the polls by 11 a.m.

(Editor’s note, added at 3 p.m.: There have been some — no one is sure how many — rather offensive robocalls made into Senate District 18 by a group, Citizens for Honesty and Sound Marriage, that has not filed a statement of organization with the state. James Lynch, reporting for KCRG-TV, notes that people on both sides of SD 18 election are denying involvement in the calls. Our audio of robocalls include only legitimate organizations that have filed appropriate paperwork with the state.)

Occupy Des Moines has done two “banner drops” on bridges across Interstate 235 in Des Moines, a person close to the group says, and plans to do more.

Last week the group placed a banner that read “www.occupydsm.org” on a bike trail across I-235 between 42nd Street and Polk Boulevard. It was up for about 12 hours before being taken down, likely by the city, the source said.

On Monday two banners on two consecutive westbound bridges near downtown were up during morning traffic. The first said “banks got bailed out,” and the second added “we got sold out.”

“We’ll continue to do banner drops,” the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They are a great form of guerrilla advertising.”

The source requested anonymity not out of concern that Occupy Des Moines would be identified as responsible for the banners, but because being identified might implicate other individuals advancing the tactic.

“I doubt the city police would pursue it,” the individual said. “Hell, I don’t even know if it’s illegal, but it could be a minor littering charge or something.”

The individual made clear that the occupy group is not responsible for two “Ron Paul revolution” banners that appeared across I-235 in recent days.

“As a movement we are independent of electoral politics,” the source said. “There is a Ron Paul faction of four or five people out of 50 to 60 core group that push their stuff, but they are a minority, if vocal, voice.”

Crossroads GPS, a conservative policy and advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., is targeting Iowa voters with TV ads in the state’s largest media market.

Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, which has ties to former White House deputy chief Karl Rove, has spent $85,125 so far at KCCI, the local CBS affiliate in Des Moines and the state’s largest network TV station. The group has run ads since late June, and recently spent $13,472 for ads running between Oct. 25 and Nov. 3. At least a portion of the ads being run in Iowa target Democratic U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell.

According to OpenSecrets.org, the 501(c)(4) “outside spending” group spent $15.1 million against Democrats in the 2009-10 cycle and $479,619 for Republicans. It spent another $1.1 million on electioneering communications. The group doesn’t disclose its donors.

American Crossroads, a related “super PAC,” raised $26.5 million in 2010 and spent $21.5 million. It raised and spent the most out of any independent expenditure-only committees in 2010.

The super PAC, which must disclose its donors, has raised $6.6 million so far this cycle.

Crossroads GPS focuses on seven issues, according to its website: lower taxes, less government spending, building the private sector, reducing government worker pay, shutting down the borders, reworking health care reform, pushing for American energy development.

The group’s latest offering against Boswell was uploaded to YouTube Monday and is embedded below.

The latest web video offering from the 2012 campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney seeks not only to link Texas’ in-state tuition program for immigrations to Democrats, but to show that it was touted by Mexican officials.

In the video a narrator asks, “Who supports Governor Perry’s decision to give in-state tuition to illegal immigrants?” Photos of President Barack Obama, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid enter the frame before the video centers on footage of Vicente Fox, former president of Mexico, praising the decision by Gov. Rick Perry and Texas lawmakers. The praise was offered by the Mexican official during a 2003 luncheon in Texas.

Perry’s controversial debate statement that those who do not agree with the state’s decision to offer tuition breaks to undocumented migrants to attend universities aren’t sympathetic enough also makes an appearance. “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart,” Perry said.

The final frames of the video provide Romney’s debate statement that the undocumented in Texas are being lifted above U.S. citizens because they are offered a better discount on an education in the state than those in other states.

A copy of the video is embedded below.

An in-state tuition law that sailed through the Texas Legislature and across the governor’s desk 10 years ago continues to haunt Rick Perry’s presidential campaign in strange new ways. Most recently, a hardline anti-illegal immigration group protested outside a Perry fundraiser, and new complaints about social media censorship from Perry supporters.

In Charlotte, N.C., Thursday outside a Perry fundraiser at San Antonio’s Modern Mexican restaurant, the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC mounted an afternoon protest “designed to forewarn the 81 percent of Americans found in numerous polls to oppose in-state tuition for illegal aliens about Rick Perry’s unpopular support for illegal immigrants.”

The group announced the protest as just one in a nationwide series, designed to tell the world that Perry, in the words of ALIPAC President William Gheen, supports the “illegal immigration invasion of America.”

“Close examination of Rick Perry shows a man that wants to appear to be tough on illegal immigration while in truth he is supporting the illegal immigration invasion of America,” said William Gheen. “Our protest today and the coming protests across the nation are designed to warn voters about Rick Perry’s real positions on illegal immigration before it is too late.”

The group got even more publicity than it bargained for earlier this week, when Americans for Rick Perry’s social media director Clint Cox flagged a Facebook post on the ALIPAC protest to have it removed, the latest awkward attempt from the governor’s camp to avoid negative social media mentions. ALIPAC seized on the mini-scandal.

This flap over the 2001 law granting in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants has also offered a taller soapbox to tea party groups in Texas that have been asking Perry to bring the Texas Legislature back to harshen up the state’s immigration laws.

It’s a drumbeat they’ve kept up since just after the last legislative session ended, but on Thursday Politico’s Reid Epstein called it “a new front” for Perry’s immigration defense, with the groups’ plans to offer yet another call for a special immigration session of the Legislature. As Dallas-area tea party leader Katrina Pierson suggested to Politico, it’d be a chance for Perry to “clarify his position on illegal immigration.”

“If he can’t get the job done in Texas with a supermajority, with something that he says is a priority, how is he going to get that done in D.C.?” Pierson said. “You have control of everything in Texas, and you still can’t it done. He doesn’t want to get it done.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s legislative endorsements in Iowa are quite the mixed bag: A state senator who served jail time for selling pot; a former mayor who allegedly stalked his ex-girlfriend until the police intervened; a state senator who can claim to be the first to show Focus on the Family videos at the state Capitol; and a state senator who dressed half naked in a chicken costume to dispense beer to bikers.

Sen. Kent Sorenson was the first state legislator to endorse Bachmann, doing so in March 2011. The Republican from Indianola is also the chairman of Bachmann’s Iowa campaign. First a state representative, Sorenson won a seat in the Iowa Senate in 2010. And he’s had a checkered past.

In 1993, Sorenson was caught in a police sting after he tried to sell an informant marijuana, The Des Moines Register reported. He pleaded guilty to delivery of marijuana and spent 5 days in jail and paid $300.

Sorenson told the paper that he was a different person back then and had changed his life.

The Register also reported that Sorenson fell behind on his child support payments in 1992 and the state ordered his wages be garnished and he fell behind again in 1995.

From left, Sens. Kent Sorenson, Nancy Boettger, Mark Chelgren and Brad Zaun

In his capacity as a lawmaker, Sorenson’s state-based career matches Bachmann’s zeal for combating equality for same-sex couples.

Immediatley following the Iowa Supreme Court decision that legalized civil marriage for gays and lesbians, Sorenson called for a battle.

“We are preparing for a battle,” Republican Rep. Kent Sorenson wrote via Twitter, “and will fighting give the people the opportunity to vote.”

Sorenson’s follow-up said, “I firmly believe that the people … should speak on this issue. I believe marriage is between 1 man and 1 woman and I will fight for this.”

There were allegations that Sorenson’s office had contacted county clerks asking them to consider not issuing same-sex marriage licenses.

The Register obtained emails from the county clerks and, according to an email obtained from Warren County Recorder Polly Glascock, one of Sorenson’s aides wondered if she would follow the law and marry same-couples.

“She inquired as to why I thought I had to do that it’s not a law, it’s an opinion,” wrote Glascock.

Sorenson said he didn’t ask his aide to call the clerks.

“I’m not calling for anarchy,” he said. “I want to make it clear that I’m not calling, pressuring her not to do her job. She has to do her job. That’s up to her, the oath she took and what she feels she has to do.”

He authored a bill to make the election of Supreme Court justices direct like other statewide offices and pushed for impeachment hearings against Iowa Supreme Court justices because of their civil marriage decision.

When he was elected to the Senate in 2010 he told a radio show that his constituents sent him to the Capitol to “burn this place down. They want me to do battle. And I understand that.”

Much like Bachmann when she was in the Minnesota Senate, Sorenson tried to suspend the rules to get a constitutional ban on civil marriage for gays and lesbians passed, but was ultimately rebuffed. “I assure you, one way or another we’re going to get a vote, even if I have to overrule the ruling of the chair, which I’m told has never been done in the Senate,” he told the Mason City Globe Gazette in 2010.

Danny Carroll, chairman of The Family Leader/Iowa Family Policy Center at the time, sent an email to supporters saying that Sorenson was planning to “file numerous amendments and use any other tactic at his disposal” in order to force a vote on same-sex marriage.

He was very adamant about his push to oust Senate Democrats who blocked anti-gay and anti-abortion measure in an update to constituents.

“My recommendation?” asked Sorenson. “I’d say that contacting guys like [Senate Majority Leader Mike] Gronstal and [Sen. Joe] Bolkcom is a waste of time if your intention is to persuade them to do the ‘right thing.’ Only God and prayer can accomplish that. Rather, continue to barrage them with emails and phone calls to get them on the record. Put it in your minds and remember the blood on their hands.

“And when the election season comes around, show them no mercy, and give them no quarter. They don’t. I can personally say that in the political arena, they sure don’t. And the babies who pay with their precious lives are an eternal testament to that fact.”

But, he’s also picked up on other issues that Bachmann has only flirted with.

Earlier this spring, Sorenson introduced legislation that would require presidential candidates to produce a birth certificate for public inspection.

Sorenson sponsored a bill that would return Iowa to the gold standard, calculating state taxes in gold and silver coins instead of U.S. currency. He spread falsehoods about the Affordable Care Act. Like Bachmann, he home-schools his children.

Though he’s backing Bachmann in 2011, Sorenson got campaign help in 2010 from Ron Paul in the form of a fundraiser and he was endorsed by Huckabee for his 2010 Senate bid.

Sen. Brad Zaun

Iowa Sen. Brad Zaun is backing Bachmann in Iowa and serves, alongside Sorenson, as a state co-chair for her campaign. He also has a sketchy past.

Before he was senator, he was the mayor of Urbandale, a suburb of Des Moines, where he was had told by police to stay away from a former girlfriend.

“Brad yelled from outside calling her slut and other names,” the police report said. Zaun and the woman had broken up earlier in the year. The officer responding to the incident wrote, “Brad has not accepted the relationship being over and has called her home and cell phone and has come to her home uninvited several times within the past year.”

The report stated that Zaun pounded on windows and doors and called the woman excessively. In fact, the officer was at the woman’s residence when Zaun called. She answered the phone. “Brad stated: ‘So how was Danny tonight anyway?’” The report indicates this was in reference to another man the woman had been dating.

Zaun called the episode “embarrassing,” and it was credited with sinking his congressional campaign. Zaun was running against Democratic Rep. Leonard Boswell when the news broke two months before the 2010 election. It sparked outcry from the Iowa Democratic Party.

“Brad Zaun’s record speaks for itself. This type of behavior isn’t acceptable from any elected official or candidate for public office,” said Norm Sterzenbach, IDP executive director. “Brad Zaun lacks the judgement and leadership experience to represent Iowans.”

Reports of the incident led national Democrats to target a half-dozen congressional candidates in the GOP’s “Young Guns” program who had been subject to criminal investigations involving threats and violence against women. Zaun was among them.

“It sends women across the country a chilling message when House Republican leadership promotes the campaigns of their Republican recruits with allegations of attempted rape, sexual assault, restraining orders, and other violent behavior towards women,” said Jennifer Crider, a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokeswoman. “Our mothers, daughters, and sisters deserve better than Republican leadership that not only tolerates this contemptible behavior, but actively seeks out candidates like this and promotes them.”

Zaun fought back by having his wife pen a campaign ad days before the election that said, “My husband Brad is running for Congress. I knew it would be tough, what I didn’t expect was (Rep.) Leonard Boswell’s (D) ugly personal attacks on my husband and our family. Mr. Boswell, your negative campaign is disgraceful. If you’d fought harder for our jobs, you wouldn’t need to sink so low to keep yours. I’m voting for Brad Zaun, not because he’s my husband, but because I know the truth.”

Like Bachmann, Zaun has taken some very conservative positions.

Zaun was caught on video saying state and federal money should not be used to help Iowans who were victims of devastating floods in 2008. “The fact of the matter is, is what has been forgotten is personal responsibility. We lost that as a country, we expect when there’s a flood or something that’s going on, the government to come in and help us,” he said at a forum at Drake University.

His views on immigration align with those of Bachmann, who was recently courting anti-immigration activists in Arizona.

“Arizona is trying to put teeth in the law that the feds should be doing in the first place. I think [Obama] has totally mishandled it,” he told the New York Post last year in reference to that state’s controversial SB1070.

While running for Congress in 2010, Zaun said, “Illegal people who are here, put them on a bus and send them wherever they came from.”

Zaun lent his support to a church that openly flouted the law when it engaged in a successful campaign to unseat three Iowa Supreme Court justices because they overturned a legislative ban on civil marriage for gays and lesbians.

“I believe the church up in Sioux City, as well as any church in America, should have the right to be able to give their views from the pulpit,” Zaun said.

Though he’s backing Bachmann this cycle, Zaun was the honorary chair for Mitt Romney’s campaign in Iowa’s Polk County in 2008. He got $1,000 from Romney’s Commonwealth PAC. During the 2012 cycle, he’s received $1,000 from Herman Cain’s PAC and $4,998 from Tim Pawlenty’s PAC.

Chickenman

Another Bachmann endorser, state Sen. Mark Chelgren won his first term in 2010 and the Des Moines Cityview picked up some colorful stories from his past.

(Photo: underthegoldendome.com)

The Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, or RAGBRAI, is an annual bicycle ride from the state’s western border to it’s eastern border. Chelgren would be dressed as a chicken or other costume.

“Chickenman — er, Chelgren — was the impresario. Wearing a kilt and wielding a beer-filled super soaker, he greeted random riders who were friendly (or cute) enough with free beer,” the paper wrote.

Chelgren barely won his Senate seat; it went to a recount.

In his months at the Iowa Legislature, he’s compared pre-school to Nazi indoctrination.

Nancy Boettger

Sen. Nancy Boettger raised eyebrows in Des Moines last year when she reserved space at the Capitol for the Iowa Family Policy Center to screen Focus on the Family’s “Truth Project,” a 12-part series espousing a “biblical worldview.”

Former GOP presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo worked to keep immigration a part of the national conversation in 2008, and the former Colorado congressman isn’t too keen on recent stances taken by Texas Gov. Rick Perry during the 2012 contest.

In the wake of last week’s GOP candidate debate, Tancredo decried Perry as an arrogant “name-calling, open border, pro-amnesty politician.”

In a release sent out by his “Team America” political action committee (“Dedicated to securing our nation’s borders”), Tancredo held nothing back, roaring through the release with the kind of rhetorical engine revving that conjures th smell of exhaust and burnt rubber. He rang every kind of alarm bell by comparing Perry to both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Four of the first six sentences of the release end in exclamation points and one with a word in all caps:

Dear Friend,

I need your help getting the word out on Rick Perry. Right now Perry is the Republican frontrunner for president — we can’t let him win! When it comes to immigration the man is George W. Bush’s clone! If Perry gets to the White House we’ll be back to fighting massive blanket amnesty for illegal aliens. You can count on it!

At last week’s presidential debate Perry had the audacity to call those of us who oppose in-state tuition for illegal aliens HEARTLESS!

Perry told moderator Chris Wallace that none of his opponents had worked as hard as he has on the issues of border security and immigration, and that the decision to give undocumented college students in-state tuition was a state issue, voted into law by a vast majority of Texas legislators.

“If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than that they have been brought there by no fault of their own I don’t think you have a heart. We need to be educating these children because they will become a drag on our society,” he said.

The exchanges over immigration were perhaps the most heated of the night.

Rick Santorum called Perry a big government leader “worse than Barack Obama.”

The virulent Tancredo attack recalls the disgusted and mocking approach “The Tank” took toward amateur GOP and tea party Colorado gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes last year — at least before a fed-up Tancredo decided to jump into the race himself. He routinely referred to Maes as naive and ridiculous. He blasted him on the radio and in daily public appearances as not up to the job. The clash helped Democrat John Hickenlooper waltz into office on a landslide victory.

Perry charged up the GOP field last month when he entered the race, but has performed badly in debates. The Texan appears to often search for words and pause blankly while trying to make points. His attacks on President Obama have been unoriginal and heavy-handed.

The timing and substance of a recent attack drew questions about Perry’s awareness of the nation’s geo-political status and interests. On the same day Obama defended Israel at the United Nations by taking an internationally unpopular stand against Palestinian statehood, Perry held a press conference to call the president an “appeaser” of Israel’s enemies.

Tancredo in his release called into question Perry’s touted record of job creation and did so in typical Tancredo fashion, arguing that many of the jobs went to illegal aliens.

“Of the jobs Perry created since 2007, 81 percent went to immigrants, 40 percent to illegal immigrants!!”

A larger excerpt from Tancredo’s release:

Obama and Perry-two peas in the immigration pod

… Only those without hearts, Perry said, would be against his 2001 signature legislation which made Texas the first state to give in-state tuition to illegal aliens. This phony compassion didn’t cost Perry a penny-but it’s been costing the taxpayers $100,000 for every illegal alien who took him up on this sweet deal.

The delegates in the hall were astounded at his position and his arrogance, but it came as no surprise to me. Perry has long shown himself to be a name-calling, open border, pro-amnesty politician.

Four years ago I ran for president to pressure the Republican candidates to take a hard line against illegal immigration. For this Perry called me a racist! I called his office and demanded an apology and got nowhere.

That’s when I started to take a closer look at Perry and found an alarming pro-illegal immigrant consistency to both the man’s words and record.

Perry is for open borders and against building a fence: In a speech in Mexico in 2007, Perry said he supported completely open borders, calling for the “free flow of individuals between these two countries who want to work and want to be an asset to our country and to Mexico.” And he came out against building a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border. When in Mexico…

Perry is for massive blanket amnesty: In 2006 Perry came out in favor of blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants, albeit without citizenship, supporting “a guest worker program that takes undocumented workers off the black market and legitimizes their economic contribution.”

Perry opposes Arizona’s tough anti-illegal immigration law: Perry said of Arizona’s tough anti-illegal immigration law, SB 1070, “I have concerns with portions of the law passed in Arizona and believe it would not be the right direction for Texas.”

Perry opposes E-Verify–even for state employees: Last year Perry spoke out against using E-Verify even to prevent illegal immigrants from getting jobs as state employees, who get their paychecks from the taxpayers. He insisted it “would not make a hill of beans’ difference. Maybe not to Perry it wouldn’t–but it would mean a world of difference to some unemployed American workers and their families!

The Governor is running his whole campaign on all the jobs he has created in Texas and says he’ll do the same when he is President. Lets’ hope not! Of the jobs Perry created since 2007, 81% went to immigrants, 40% to illegal immigrants!!

We can’t afford Rick Perry as President. We need someone who will fight to get Americans back to work and our country back on track. Amnesty, in-state tuition, and jobs for illegals, along with open borders, aren’t part of that formula! And neither is Rick Perry.

We can beat Obama next year-but we must do it with a strong leader who will secure our borders, enforce our laws, and never give amnesty to illegal immigrants. Our future depends on it! And Rick Perry will do none of that!

Please help me get the word out about Rick Perry. America can’t afford four more years of a politically pandering, pro-illegal immigrant president-whether they are Republican or Democrat! We need our laws enforced now!