Posted on 12/19/2007 1:18:07 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The scuttle is:
Rep. Tom Tancredo will drop out of the presidential race tomorrow and endorse either Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson.... neither of those candidates know who, just yet.
But the scuttle is probably wrong. Tancredo has been critical of all his opponents, and, given his issue's saliency, he does not need to endorse. His party sounds like him, now, on immigration.
(Excerpt) Read more at marcambinder.theatlantic.com ...
Its probably the last day before Christmas that you can make any big news that people will pay attention to.
What did he say about McCain-Feingold?
And, in a stunning turn of events, Tancredo joins the founder of the Minuteman in endorsing Huckabee ...... :)
To scuttle is to intentionally self-sink a boat, so it may be an appropriate use.
“I’ll vote for Thompson if Hunter becomes his running mate.”
Impossible. Surely you have heard of balancing the ticket? Thompson will be thought of as quite conservative by the majority of the electorate. Did Reagan pick a conservative for VP? No, he did not, he picked a Rockyfeller Republican.
Bush II ran as a compassionate (moderate) conservative, and picked a strong conserative with a lot of experience to balance his lack of same.
Rudy, Romney or Huckabee would pick a guy like Hunter. Fred would probably look for a candidate who could bring in a big state, and be seen as moderate.
Hunter will be up for a top cabinet position.
Yes, I know, you don’t like any of this at all.
And that means the Christmas holiday to talk things over with family and friends. Good point.
If he endorses Flip Romney, I’ll lose every ounce of respect I currently have for the man.
Be nice to see both Tancredo and Hunter drop out and support Thompson with the idea that Tancredo will be in charge of INS and Hunter in charge of Homeland Security/fence building.
(P.S. I’ve been a Hunter supporter and am not really happy with ANY of the others)
People also don’t pick running mates that can’t deliver their home state, at least. Hunter obviously can’t.
People need to forget their Hunter-VP fantasies.
You don't think he'll follow Pat Robertson's lead and endorse Rude-de.
What does the endorsement matter? It’s not like he’s got a vast army of supporters.
People need to forget their Hunter-VP fantasies.
Agreed. Those fantasies are the fallback postion from their original hopes for Hunter. At least they are headed in the right direction (down-ticket).
Probably so. And I doubt Romney feels he needs this particular endorsement, although I’m certain he wouldn’t mind having it.
On the other hand, Tancredo and Romney do share a common thread on illegal immigration, as they both were attacked by the liberal media for hiring companies that sent illegal workers to their houses.
My guess he will endorse Fred just like his Buddy in Iowa, Steve King.
I’ll bet Tanc was pissed when Gilchrist endorsed Huckabilly and would like to knock some wind out of those sails.
It would be a politically smart move for Tank at this point.
I don’t think he will, but I wish he would just so I could watch the mitt-haters all tell me how liberal and a sellout he is.
Well, Bush wasn’t really worried about picking up Wyoming when he added Cheney to the ticket.
Thompson would be the kind of guy that might pick the best person, not the expedient one.
But that might not be any of the current candidates.
BTW, since Thompson really likes McCain, I wouldn’t rule out a Thompson/McCain ticket. And I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility that McCain wouldn’t go ahead and serve as VP for his good friend — I don’t think McCain would do so for anybody else.
But he has a few very strong and involved supporters, and that might help Thompson because Thompson did come late to the game.
But he doesn’t help Thompson on the ISSUE, because Thompson is already considered a reasonable choice for immigration. So he probably would help Romney more in that regard — even though he wouldn’t bring anything organizationally that Romney could use.
I'll try to summarize his lengthy answer as best I can.
Basically, he said most of us agree there must be *some* limits on campaign contributions to candidates ("even Barry Goldwater was for that"). But, the traditional $1000 per person per candidate was too low; it favored incumbents because it made it very hard for a challenger to get any traction.
Meanwhile, soft contributions were just a back door way of corrupting the system. So, he used McCain-Feingold to increase the per-person contribution limit while at the same time fixing much of what was wrong with soft money.
He also said in retrospect, the limits on advertising were the wrong thing to do and should not have been in the bill.
I'm sure I didn't do justice to his reasoning. LinnKeyes2000 was there, too; hopefully, he'll see this and can do better.
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