As expected, Tom Tancredo ended his quixotic presidential campaign today. What was less expected was his announcement that he would support rival Mitt Romney’s candidacy.
Republican Tom Tancredo announced Thursday that he is dropping out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination.
Tancredo, a five-term congressman from Colorado, said he would endorse rival Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination.
Tancredo has consistently polled at the bottom of the nine-person Republican field. He based his campaign on fighting illegal immigration and has run television ads that link lax border control to terrorist attacks, rape and other crimes.
He made his announcement at a news conference in downtown Des Moines, two weeks before Iowa begins the presidential nominating process with the state’s precinct caucuses.
As recently as October, Tancredo was asked whether he would commit to supporting the eventual GOP nominee, no matter who it is. He balked: “You know, I’ve said I don’t know how many times that I am absolutely tired and sick and tired of being forced to go to the polls and say I’m going to make this choice between the lesser of two evils. I really don’t intend to do that again.”
Today, however, Tancredo switched gears, and threw his support to Romney, who hasn’t exactly been reliably right-wing on Tancredo’s signature issue (xenophobic hatred of foreigners).
It leads to two questions: why Tancredo dropped out today, and what impact (if any) he’s had on the race.
On the first point, I suspect Tancredo settled on Romney as a process-of-elimination candidate. In all likelihood, he strongly opposes Giuliani, Huckabee, and McCain — all of whom have backed “amnesty” and “amnesty-like” measures — and was left with two top-tier candidates to get behind: Thompson and Romney. My hunch is, he backed Romney as the more viable of the two.
Why not just wait until after the Iowa caucuses, which are a mere two weeks away? Because, I suspect, Tancredo wants to have some influence. If he can give Romney a boost now, it’s more likely to have an effect.
On the second point, I think Tancredo has generally had an exaggerated sense of his own worth. At a GOP debate in late-November, after hearing the rest of the candidates take a hard, conservative line on immigration, Tancredo boasted:
“Yeah, well, I tell you, this has been wonderful. I — and Senator McCain may not be happy with this — the spirit of this debate. As — for a guy who usually stands on the bookend — here — side and just listens all the time, that’s kind of frustrating, you know, in other debates. I have to tell you, so far it’s been wonderful — (laughter) — because — because all I’ve heard is — is — is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo. (Laughter.) It is great. I am so happy to hear it. (Applause.) It is a wonderful thing, and it’s a good message.”
Indeed, as far as Tancredo is concerned, he got in the race to pull the party to the far-right on immigration, and after eight months of campaigning, he’s succeeded. He admitted as much today, saying he successfully pushed his anti-immigration position to the forefront of Republican politics.
I don’t think that’s true. Tancredo has barely had a campaign operation to speak of, barely campaigned outside the debates, and never actually tried to win the GOP nomination. By his reasoning, he would run for president, draw tons of support with his anti-immigration platform, and force his Republican rivals to run to the hard-right, just to pick up voters who would otherwise gravitate to Tancredo.
That clearly never happened. Tancredo never caught fire; he didn’t even cause a spark. Yes, other Republican candidates have embarrassed themselves with anti-immigration positions of their own, but by all indications, they would have done that anyway in response to demands from the party’s far-right base.
Ultimately, it appears Tancredo’s only real contribution to the campaign were some of the most shamelessly demagogic campaign commercials in American history.
As for what’s next, Tancredo has already announced that he won’t seek re-election to the House, meaning that the political world will be free of his influence come January 2009. It may be a brief respite — he’s reportedly planning a Senate campaign in 2010.
For now, however, it’s so long to Tom Tancredo, and his hateful, fear-mongering ways. He won’t be missed on the political stage.