And Then There Were Seven: Tancredo To Drop Out?
That appears to be the speculation amongst pundits who heard about Tom Tancredo's scheduled presser tomorrow at 2 PM Central time. From Jonathan Martin @ The Politico:
Tom Tancredo has scheduled a press conference in Des Moines tomorrow afternoon to make a "major announcement regarding the campaign," according to a media advisory his campaign sent out today.
Asked whether Tancredo intended to drop out of the race, his congressional spokesman, TQ Houlton, said he didn't know. But Houlton didn't affirm that Tancredo was staying in and directed calls to the campaign.
A campaign spokesman didn't immediately reply to an email or voice mail.
Tancredo will appear at the Des Moines Marriott tomorrow at 2:00 Central, according to the advisory.
Despite the fervor Iowa Republicans have over Tancredo's pet issue, immigration, the Colorado congressman has not seen a commensurate bump in the polls. And even though he's run a couple of provocative ads warning about the security threat of illegal immigration, his numbers have remained in the low single-digits.
Perhaps most notably, Tancredo's close friend, Rep. Steve King, passed over his colleague and threw his support behind Fred Thompson this week. King and Tancredo have worked closely on immigration and many in Iowa thought King would not endorse as long as Tancredo was in the race.
A source close to King said they knew of the press conference for tomorrow but didn't know what Tancredo would announce.
Better late than never. Look, we like Tom Tancredo, but as we pointed out in one of our earlier columns Tom Tancredo is a literally "one trick pony." He has one issue that he knows more about than probably any other candidate -- illegal immigration. If the presidency rested solely on that issue, and nothing else, then we would be behind him almost 100%. But it is not, and we have heard little from him, be it in a debate or television ads, that shows he has ideas for much of anything else.
The next question that comes up, should he actually announce he is dropping out of the race, is where do his supporters go? Who will they choose. While some will say they would venture to Duncan Hunter's camp, or Ron Paul's, we do not think that they will be flirting with any of the also-rans. They will go to the leaders in the race. That means Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Mike Huckabee.
If we had to pick one for certain that would pick up the most support from this possible bow out, we would hedge our bets on Fred Thompson, given the endorsement of Steve King, a longtime friend an ally of Tom Tancredo's. Tancredo might even urge his supporters to do that. He will definitely urge them to support the GOP nominee, whoever that will be. But we are guessing that Fred Thompson will receive the boost from them. That is solely based on his conservative credentials as he is the most conservative of all the potential nominees.
As for the supporters who may feel sad over this, do not be that way. Had he been the nominee, he would have been soundly beat by Hillary. Granted, her nominee potential looks rather bleak right now, but given the fact that Democrats -- today's Democrats -- do not nominate a former loser, and given that Barack Obama is not likely to take the nomination, barring a miracle of Biblical proportions when the primaries begin voting, Hillary will be their nominee. Tom Tancredo really had no shot in beating her thanks to her hawkish stance on immigration. The only thing he might have been able to beat her on is taxes. Tancredo is among the fiscally responsible in Congress, and given her ideas for the nation -- ideas that she said this nation could not afford all of them -- her tax-and-spend ways would be evident from the start of the general.
So if it is true that tom Tancredo is leaving, we are sorry to hear that, but we also knew it was inevitable. If this is not an announcement of him leaving the race, the only other thing he could possibly want to hold a presser for is he has a running mate, which seems just a bit premature given that he has not won the nomination yet, and unless that running mate is phenomenal, it will do him little good. So we will stand by the speculation now that he is leaving the race, and heading back to Congress.
Marcie
Tom Tancredo has scheduled a press conference in Des Moines tomorrow afternoon to make a "major announcement regarding the campaign," according to a media advisory his campaign sent out today.
Asked whether Tancredo intended to drop out of the race, his congressional spokesman, TQ Houlton, said he didn't know. But Houlton didn't affirm that Tancredo was staying in and directed calls to the campaign.
A campaign spokesman didn't immediately reply to an email or voice mail.
Tancredo will appear at the Des Moines Marriott tomorrow at 2:00 Central, according to the advisory.
Despite the fervor Iowa Republicans have over Tancredo's pet issue, immigration, the Colorado congressman has not seen a commensurate bump in the polls. And even though he's run a couple of provocative ads warning about the security threat of illegal immigration, his numbers have remained in the low single-digits.
Perhaps most notably, Tancredo's close friend, Rep. Steve King, passed over his colleague and threw his support behind Fred Thompson this week. King and Tancredo have worked closely on immigration and many in Iowa thought King would not endorse as long as Tancredo was in the race.
A source close to King said they knew of the press conference for tomorrow but didn't know what Tancredo would announce.
Better late than never. Look, we like Tom Tancredo, but as we pointed out in one of our earlier columns Tom Tancredo is a literally "one trick pony." He has one issue that he knows more about than probably any other candidate -- illegal immigration. If the presidency rested solely on that issue, and nothing else, then we would be behind him almost 100%. But it is not, and we have heard little from him, be it in a debate or television ads, that shows he has ideas for much of anything else.
The next question that comes up, should he actually announce he is dropping out of the race, is where do his supporters go? Who will they choose. While some will say they would venture to Duncan Hunter's camp, or Ron Paul's, we do not think that they will be flirting with any of the also-rans. They will go to the leaders in the race. That means Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Mike Huckabee.
If we had to pick one for certain that would pick up the most support from this possible bow out, we would hedge our bets on Fred Thompson, given the endorsement of Steve King, a longtime friend an ally of Tom Tancredo's. Tancredo might even urge his supporters to do that. He will definitely urge them to support the GOP nominee, whoever that will be. But we are guessing that Fred Thompson will receive the boost from them. That is solely based on his conservative credentials as he is the most conservative of all the potential nominees.
As for the supporters who may feel sad over this, do not be that way. Had he been the nominee, he would have been soundly beat by Hillary. Granted, her nominee potential looks rather bleak right now, but given the fact that Democrats -- today's Democrats -- do not nominate a former loser, and given that Barack Obama is not likely to take the nomination, barring a miracle of Biblical proportions when the primaries begin voting, Hillary will be their nominee. Tom Tancredo really had no shot in beating her thanks to her hawkish stance on immigration. The only thing he might have been able to beat her on is taxes. Tancredo is among the fiscally responsible in Congress, and given her ideas for the nation -- ideas that she said this nation could not afford all of them -- her tax-and-spend ways would be evident from the start of the general.
So if it is true that tom Tancredo is leaving, we are sorry to hear that, but we also knew it was inevitable. If this is not an announcement of him leaving the race, the only other thing he could possibly want to hold a presser for is he has a running mate, which seems just a bit premature given that he has not won the nomination yet, and unless that running mate is phenomenal, it will do him little good. So we will stand by the speculation now that he is leaving the race, and heading back to Congress.
Marcie
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 4:33 PM
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