Kate points to a fear-mongering Tancredo ad making the rounds in Iowa. Matt Yglesias writes that he isn't surprised: "I used to think that 2008 was going to see a Tancredo surge based on his ability to tap into grassroots loathing of brown-skinned people on the home front as well as in foreign policy. But then came the comprehensive reform fiasco which happened early enough in the race to get all the mainstream candidates on the anti-immigration bandwagon, so as a result Tancredo needs to escalate his rhetoric to stay relevant." What struck me about the spot, which features an illegal immigrant dropping off a bomb at a big box type store populated entirely by white people, is that the perpetrator himself isn't visibly ethnic in any way. He wears white rubber gloves to pack up the bomb (which makes sense) and his face is obscured by his hood, making him appear even more ominous. With that, Tancredo manages to produce an incendiary ad that likens all immigrants to terrorists, yet avoids a noisy debate about whether his campaign vilifies brown-skinned people. --Dana Goldstein
