Well that just about blind sided me. Anyone else see that coming?

I just heard on the news a few minutes ago that Tom Tancredo is expected to make a big announcement tomorrow.  Is he dropping out of the Presidential race?  Could he be announcing a Senatorial run?  Or could it be both?

Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo declared his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election this morning on a radio talk show in Des Moines, Iowa.

Tancredo’s candidacy will be focused almost entirely on immigration issues, which he hopes to bring to the forefront among the leading Republican candidates of Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain.

The Denver Post

The second paragraph is what is really important here.  Tom Tancredo really doesn’t have a chance at getting the nomination for the Republican Party, but I think he is there to influence the debate and force in depth discussion on the illegal immigration problem.

Red State story here.

In fact, it’s not clear Tancredo is in line with the mainstream, social conservative wing of the GOP he seeks to align himself with. According to campaign finance reports, one of Tancredo’s biggest financial backers has been the family of Dr. John Tanton, the founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Wall Street Journal editorial-page features writer Jason Riley wrote a devastating piece about the organization back in 2004, in which the group’s pro-abortion and pro-eugenics roots were revealed.

Tanton is also one of the most prominent conservative financiers of Planned Parenthood in the United States, having helped found in the mid-1960s the first Planned Parenthood chapter in northern Michigan.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Center for Immigration Studies may strike right-wing poses in the press, but both groups support big government, mock federalism, deride free markets and push a cultural agenda abhorrent to any self-respecting social conservative.

FAIR’s founder and former president is John Tanton, an eye doctor who opened the first Planned Parenthood chapter in northern Michigan. By Dr. Tanton’s own reckoning, FAIR has received more than $1.5 million from the Pioneer Fund, a white-supremacist outfit devoted to racial purity through eugenics.

Board members of FAIR actively promote the sterilization of Third World women for the purposes of reducing U.S. immigration prospects. And if anything disturbs the good doctor more than those Latin American hordes crossing the Rio Grande, it’s the likelihood that most of them are Catholic, or so he once told a Reuters reporter.

CIS, an equally repugnant FAIR offshoot, is a big fan of China’s one-child policy and publishes books advocating looser limits on abortion and wider use of RU-486. CIS considers the Sierra Club, which cites “stabilizing world population” fourth on its 21st century to-do list, as too moderate. And like FAIR, CIS has called for a target U.S. population of 150 million, about half of what it is today.

I post this just as an fyi. I am not taking a position either way, as I don’t think taking money from pro-choicers makes one pro-choice.

Iowa sources are reporting Tom Tancredo will announce his presidential campaign this weekend in Iowa. I have talked with several pro-Tancredo sources who seem to be confirming this rumor.

This is one of those neat little quizzes where you answer a few questions and then it tells you who your ideal candidate is for President in 2008. It lists the top 25. I got a 100% for Tom Tancredo.

Rank Item
(100%) 1: Rep. Tom Tancredo (R) Information
(98%) 2: Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R) Information
(89%) 3: Ex-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R) Information
(89%) 4: Sen. Sam Brownback (R) Information
(88%) 5: Sen. George Allen (R) Information
(78%) 6: Ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) Information
(77%) 7: Sen. John McCain (R) Information
(73%) 8: Gov. Mitt Romney (R) Information
(69%) 9: Gov. George Pataki (R) Information
(68%) 10: Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) Information
(65%) 11: Sec. Condoleezza Rice (R) Information
(64%) 12: Gov. Bill Richardson (D) Information
(64%) 13: Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) Information
(62%) 14: Sen. Evan Bayh (D) Information
(60%) 15: Ex-Gov. Mark Warner (D) Information
(49%) 16: Ex-Sen. John Edwards (D) Information
(43%) 17: Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) Information
(42%) 18: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D) Information
(42%) 19: Sen. Joseph Biden (D) Information
(41%) 20: Sen. Christopher Dodd (D) Information
(39%) 21: Ex-Gen. Wesley Clark (D) Information
(37%) 22: Gov. Tom Vilsack (D) Information
(35%) 23: Sen. Russ Feingold (D) Information
(34%) 24: Ex-VP Al Gore (D) Information
(30%) 25: Sen. John Kerry (D) Information

This was cool to see. The immigration debate really is a hot button issue and I personally think will be the number one issue to voters come November. I don’t know if this will have any significancy on a Tancredo candidacy, however. First I heard he was going to run, then I heard he isn’t, so who knows.

I also want to note that John McCain came nowhere close to being at the top, and that’s not just in Michigan, that’s in every straw poll that has happened so far. Despite all the media hype about McCain and their constant referal to him as the front runner, it’s all BS and McCain knows it.

Rep. Tom Tancredo’s get-tough-first attitude on immigration reform is having a positive impact on his possible presidential run in 2008. The Colorado Republican won tonight’s GOP straw poll in Macomb County, Mich., located in the Detroit metro area.

Tancredo took about 18% of the vote of 325 votes cast at the Lincoln Day Dinner. Although it was only a plurality on a fractured GOP ballot, Tancredo beat out GOP heavyweights Rudy Giuliani, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Tom Tancredo in Iowa now, and invited by another Representative… hmm things are getting interesting. Maybe Tommy T ain’t the out-of-step Rep the Bushies tried to paint him as back in the day.

King hosts illegal immigration forum

DES MOINES, Iowa U-S Congressman Steve King has gathered a panel of anti-illegal immigration proponents to sway Iowans before the next onslaught of presidential candidates hits the state.
Guests at the Des Moines forum included Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minutemen Project, a national movement that has stationed citizens on the U-S-Mexican border to stop illegal immigrants.

King, a conservative Republican, says he wants Iowans to understand immigration policy and challenge the presidential candidates during the Iowa caucuses.

Iowa Lietenant Governor Sally Pederson, a Democrat, says King’s forum featured the Republican Party’s most staunch anti-immigration advocates, including Congressman Tom Tancredo, from Colorado, and Congressman J.D. Hayworth from Arizona.

She says Iowans understand this is a state and a nation of immigrants, and they expect a fair immigration policy, not one based on hate and discrimination.

King says he’ll hold more forums leading up to the presidential election.