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Littwin: With friends like Tancredo, happy Dems are here again

By Mike Littwin
Denver Post Columnist
Posted: 11/15/2009 01:00:00 AM MST
Updated: 11/15/2009 01:06:43 AM MST

Don't be alarmed. That loud sound you hearlouder even than the pop of the Balloon Boy hoax imploding — is just Tom Tancredo crashing another party.

The noise can't surprise anyone. Tancredo — who won't argue if you call him a bomb thrower or, in the case of certain holy cities, a potential bomb dropper — never does anything quietly.

The word, put out by Tancredo himself, is that he's very close to joining the Republican gubernatorial fray. He told Westword he "fully" intends to enter the primary race.

Of course he intends to enter the race. It's Tom Tancredo. This move is so predictable that, looking back, it's hard to see how everyone missed it. Certainly, Scott McInnis didn't see it coming.

In fact, the really quiet sound that you can almost make out — if you listen very, very closely — is McInnis on the phone, begging Josh Penry to get back in the race. Talk about your unintended consequences. Talk about your man-made political disasters.

To recap: McInnis' people talked Penry into dropping out of the primary for the good of the party — taking a bullet is how it was put at the time — only to watch Tancredo threaten to take Penry's place. In other words, the bullet ricochets and hits McInnis square in the foot.

Yes, Penry was ready to play hardball in the primary. But Tancredo, far more dangerously, plays whiffle ball. Everything he throws is a curve. You never know what he'll say, only that it will be outrageous and that the Tancredistas will support him unreservedly and that McInnis will be asked to respond.

How bad might this be for McInnis? Let's just say that when I was talking to a Democratic operative about the possibility, he told me his greatest fear was that he'd never done anything in his life to deserve such good fortune.

I'm just waiting for Bill Ritter — and this may require some imagination on your part — to break out the party hats if/when Tancredo announces.

Don't take this as a given just yet, however. Tancredo may well back out once he's reminded that he is, after all, Tom Tancredo. He has to know that even if he could somehow win a Republican primary — which I strongly doubt — he could never win a statewide general election in Colorado.

He's the Tea Party's idea of a party guy. And however loud the Tea Partiers might be, they're not a majority of anything in Colorado. You saw what happened in that upstate New York House race in which a Conservative Party candidate forced out the Republican, and Republicans lost a district they'd held dating back to the 19th century.

Colorado is changing politically, but Tancredo is more like a political changeling. How could Penry disappear and Tancredo appear in his place?

Of course, we know Tancredo is not afraid to lose. You may remember his performance in the Republican presidential primary. Just before dropping out, he was polling around 2 percent. He's also not afraid if fellow Republicans lose. He ran not because he could win. He ran because he could run. He ran as the talk-radio candidate who got to debate against the party's leading lights, forcing them to discuss illegal immigration.

I remember the night Tancredo said that the question of illegal immigration could determine "whether or not we will actually survive as a nation." Well, the nation is still here, but the Republican Party — press 1 if you follow Dave "Let's Roll" Schultheis on Twitter — is not doing so well, and particularly not in Colorado.

And the easy guess is that the re-emergence of Tancredo won't help. More likely, Tancredo — whether he wins or loses in a primary — would be the best thing that could happen for Ritter, particularly when it comes to energizing Latino voters.

When Penry was still in the race, the news was about how he and McInnis were downplaying socially conservative issues. That was then. The other night, Ken Buck, at a Republican Senate forum, decried the separation of church and state. Why not? It was Tancredo, during a presidential debate, who raised his hand to say he didn't believe in evolution.

Tancredo would force McInnis rightward, making him take positions he thought he could avoid without Penry around. Penry is no Tancredo, and I mean that in the best way. This is how Tancredo once explained his political style to me: "I go outside to build a fire and hope it raises the temperature inside. That's exactly who I am."

During the presidential election, I drew up a partial list of those feeling Tancredo heat: John McCain, Barack Obama, George Bush, Karl Rove, Mexico, Mexico's ambassador, Islam, Mecca, all Muslims, Shanksville, Pa., Canada, Denver, the Denver Public Library, John Hickenlooper, Jesus Apodaca, Ken Salazar, Hillary Clinton, Miami.

Now you can add Sonia Sotomayor. Of course Tancredo was among the first to run to the TV cameras to say she "appears" to be a racist. That's exactly who he is.

Interestingly, the Obama administration has been restating its intent to try to push immigration reform through Congress. It's probably only a coincidence that Lou Dobbs had just quit his show on CNN. But who's going to bring us the daily anti- illegal-immigration rant in his absence?

As it happens, Tom Tancredo is always at the ready. And it looks like Scott McInnis may have just handed him the megaphone.

Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.

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