Tancredo Bows Out - But Made An Impact
December 22, 2007 01:00 PM EST

Tom Tancredo has withdrawn from the Republican presidential primary. Despite Tancredo's courage, sterling conservative credentials and leadership in the fight for immigration reform, he failed to get more than a few percentage points in the polls, and decided to drop out of the race.

Was Tancredo's candidacy a failure? From the point of view of winning the race, it was.

But from the point of view of making an impact on the Republican selection process, and driving the debate on immigration, it was a success.

Consider that now, even candidates with poor records on immigration (i.e., all the GOP front-runners!) are at least trying to sound like they want to secure the border and control immigration.

The fact is, none of these guys, not Romney, not Giuliani, not Huckabee, and not McCain, have good records on immigration. Nevertheless, thanks in part to Tancredo's candidacy (and public pressure at the grassroots) they are all trying to sound like they want to secure the border. And that's good. Because even if they are just saying it to win the election, at least they are putting themselves on record to say they want to solve the problem, and we can hold their feet to the fire later.

At this point the race for the Republican nomination is wide open. None of the front-runners has really proven to the GOP electorate that he has what it takes to be President, or that he can be trusted. As a matter of fact, all 4 of them have weak conservative credentials. But we'll probably be stuck with one of them.

Or will GOP voters give Fred Thompson another look, or Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter or Alan Keyes?

It should be interesting.

But however it turns out, congratulations to Tom Tancredo for helping keep the immigration issue on the political front burner.
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/29902.html