October 29, 2010 06:02 PM UTC

Tom Tancredo Loses His Filter

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• by: Colorado Pols

You didn’t really think he could make it all the way to election day, did you? We hope this clears up why, while everybody else was joining the handwringing bandwagon as American Constitution Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo began his “surge,” and the absurd whitewash meme of the “new Tancredo” tried to get legs under it, our only question was how long he could keep this up.

As the Pueblo Chieftain’s Patrick Malone reports, not long enough.

During a campaign swing through Southern Colorado on Tuesday, Tancredo told supporters about his perception of the threat Obama poses.

“It’s to the Constitution, to the Bill of Rights,” the Canon City Daily Record quoted him as saying. “It’s not al-Qaida, it’s the guy sitting in the White House.” [Pols emphasis]

…At an Oct. 22 debate with his opponents, Democrat John Hickenlooper and Republican Dan Maes, Tancredo defended past inflammatory statements he has made.

The moderator pointed to past remarks by Tancredo that called for the bombing of Mecca, characterized Miami as a third-world country, whether he has the temperament to be governor, advocated literacy tests for Colorado voters and painted Obama as the greatest threat to the nation. He then asked whether Tancredo has the temperament to be governor.

“I absolutely do not regret (the statements),” Tancredo answered.

Our readers will recall that Tancredo said something very similar to this, at a rally for GOP Senate candidate Ken Buck just before the primary. After a couple of days of hemming and hawing, Buck agreed with Tancredo–and took hits in the press for days afterward. That was before Tancredo jumped into the gubernatorial race as a third-party candidate, of course, so Buck was the one who looked bad. Now, Tancredo’s self-inflicted wounds carry a price for himself; in addition to all the Republicans who have rallied to his standard out of desperation, amnesia, or whatever is going on.

And that isn’t the only jaw-dropping Tancredo gaffe in this final week of campaigning–The Denver newspaper reports today that Tancredo embellished President Barack Obama’s oft-misquoted remark about how some “bitter” people “cling to guns or religion.” The thing is, Obama never mentioned “white people.” That’s, rather unsurprisingly, just what Tancredo imagined hearing.

Or, as Tancredo said, “take the most inflammatory one I can think of and accept that it’s true.”

Now that, dear reader, is the Tancredo we know.

Bottom line: the gubernatorial race in Colorado has been over since several weeks before the Republican primary. All that has happened since then has been a sideshow with one possible outcome. Make that two outcomes: Governor John Hickenlooper, and a bunch of embarrassed Republicans who will spend the next few months wondering what the hell they were thinking — particularly if Dan Maes ends up with less than 10% of the vote.