One Reason Tancredo is Dropping Out Today

His campaign is concerned about blog posts written as advocacy for Ron Paul on LewRockwell.com. Not only that, but the advocacy he wants Paul to disavow isn't Stormfront, the 9/11 Truth movement, or Paul's conscious association with Alex Jones-type conspiracy theories about the NAU (which I suspect Tancredo would agree with, anyway). No, Tancredo wants Paul to disavow a blog post from a supporter seeking Latino support for Paul in which the writer (a Latino himself) dares to call the Minutemen "racist," announces personal support for amnesty (which Paul categorically has opposed), and attacks "English-only" laws, suggesting that Paul is opposed to any forced assimilation of immigrants (something I largely doubt). When a campaign with only a handful of staffers like Tancredo's is denouncing another candidate getting only a few points in the polls, that campaign is focused entirely on the wrong thing.

Not that Tancredo was ever going anywhere in this race. But it doesn't seem like he's made much impact during the campaign on his pet issue of extreme xenophobia (with which Paul often largely agrees more than the other candidates, anyways- one of my biggest problems with the Paul campaign).

Anyhow, with Tancredo dropping out, the issue is who he will endorse. Given that Paul is in favor of stricter immigration controls (not to mention his opposition to NAFTA) than anyone else except maybe for Duncan Hit....err.... Hunter, and given that Tancredo and Paul are supposedly good friends, Paul actually would have been a somewhat natural choice for Tancredo. Especially since endorsing a lower-tier candidate like Paul would have given Tancredo some extra publicity out of his endorsement, and particularly on the issue of immigration controls.

But this ridiculous press release of Tancredo's suggests otherwise, and I doubt Tancredo would be willing to take the personal risk involved with endorsing a candidate that is so disfavored by the Republican establishment, anyways. Soren Dayton at Eyeon08 suggests that Romney will get the endorsement since Tancredo will want to endorse someone with a chance at winning. I find this somewhat hard to believe, given Romney's penchant for flip-floppery and insincerity, not to mention his recent personal problems with the illegal immigration issue.

Fred Thompson would be the most logical remaining choice- the Thompson campaign is struggling, so Tancredo's endorsement would get a little extra publicity, plus Thompson still has an extremely outside chance of pulling the nomination off. On top of that Thompson is probably the strongest candidate against illegal immigration of those in the top two tiers of the race.