February 01, 2018 10:28 AM UTC

"Ultimate Insider"--Tanc Throws Major Shade At Stapleton

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Westword’s Michael Roberts reports, now ex-GOP gubernatorial frontrunner Tom Tancredo is leaving plenty of bad blood in the wake of his departure from the Republican primary as rumors of high-level intervention against Tancredo swirl among the party rank-and-file:

“I think if the Republican Governors Association had seen polling numbers that showed me to be a viable general-election candidate, they might have offered some support,” Tancredo allows. “But the Republicans in Colorado…I don’t know if they would have given me anything no matter what. Most of these folks are crony capitalists to begin with, and what they want is a cozy relationship with the government. They believe the government is mostly there to provide services for them, and they certainly hate my position on illegal immigration. So I don’t think many of them would have come in no matter what.”

Did such forces conspire to starve his candidacy in order to clear a path for Stapleton? Tancredo doubts it.

“I don’t think there was a conspiracy,” he says. “It’s not like a group of people were meeting in secret to create that phenomenon. It’s just the way it is. Nobody has to create it. Walker Stapleton is the ultimate insider, and I’m the ultimate outsider — and nothing has changed except that, in the past, I was able to raise enough money to make things doable, at least from my point of view. I raised $1 million the last time during the primary. But we weren’t going to be able to get anywhere near that this time.”

“Crony capitalists.” “Cozy relationship with the government.” “Walker Stapleton is the ultimate insider.” Tancredo may be downplaying a “conspiracy” by Republican elites in Colorado and in the Republican Governors Association (RGA) to force him out, but he is employing all of the code words necessary to tell the fractious Republican base exactly what they need to come to that conclusion by themselves. To call this sort of rhetoric from a suddenly sidelined Tancredo poisonous to lay GOP morale in general and Stapleton’s campaign in particular is an understatement.

And the Tanc wasn’t done:

Tancredo goes on, “Maybe Walker can go through his Rolodex” — a reference to Stapleton being a member of the extended Bush family that has already given the United States two presidents…

In Tancredo’s view, Stapleton will also face Colorado voters’ traditional antipathy for any candidate portrayed as inevitable: “That’s absolutely something he’s going to have to overcome. I would have had to prove that I’m not the Devil incarnate — not a wild-eyed racist who meets on Lookout Mountain with others wearing sheets. But Walker will have to defend himself against being that ultimate insider, [Pols emphasis] and I hope he has the ability and I hope he’s successful, if he’s the nominee.”

Safe to say that Tancredo is doing the opposite of releasing his supporters to get behind Stapleton. If anything, he’s making it clear that his substantial base of support will not be automatically transferable, certainly not to the “ultimate insider” whom the GOP elite appears to be now ready to anoint. After innumerable instances of party brass stepping in to squelch undesired candidates in recent years, Colorado Republican voters are thoroughly sick of this kind of heavy-handed control by elites and keen to recognize it.

Tom Tancredo just validated the base’s distrust for another election cycle.