October 29, 2007

Tancredo Retires .... Maybe

Tom Tancredo will not run for his seat in Congress regardless of how he does in the Republican primaries for the presidential nomination. It signals the end of a long Congressional career in which Tancredo has argued for the most hard-line immigration positions, as well as suggesting that the US would bomb Mecca if an Islamist terrorist detonated a nuclear bomb in an American city (via Hot Air):

Even if he loses his long-shot bid for the White House, Rep. Tom Tancredo will be leaving the U.S. House of Representatives at the end of 2008.

Tancredo, 61 , waited until after the Colorado Rockies' last out of the World Series on Sunday night before announcing that he plans to retire from Congress at the end of this, his fifth term.

"It's the fact that I really believe I have done all I can do in the House, especially about the issue (immigration) about which I care greatly," he said. ...

Tancredo parlayed a back-bench seat in Congress into a national megaphone to oppose illegal immigration, denounce a so-called "cult of multiculturalism" and warn about a "clash of civilizations" between radical Islam and Western civilizations.

Tancredo may not stay out of national politics, even after his presidential campaign comes to a quiet end. The RM News suggests that he may consider a run against Ken Salazar for the Senate in 2010, when the Democrat comes up for re-election. Tancredo thinks he can win a race based on illegal immigration against Salazar, who changed his more conservative tune on that topic once he reached Washington, DC.

I'd wait before writing him off entirely, however. Tancredo won't likely make it past the third week in January for the presidential primaries, if he even waits for the actual contests to begin before exiting. That leaves plenty of time for Tancredo to recharge his batteries and rethink his retirement. He could run from the House in the 2010 Senate race just as easily as he could from Denver, and he would have two years to focus his legislative aims at building a case for the Senate. If he lost that race, he could retire then rather than in 2008.

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