Colorado Progressive

Per yesterday’s Mike Rosen, Tom Tancredo will drop out of the race he has not yet entered in order to make way for a unified party line in the GOP’s newly hatched Contract for Colorado.

The agenda, modeled on the winning reform recipes of Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell in their New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, gives McInnis something concrete to run on rather than merely running against Ritter. It’s sufficiently faithful to traditional conservative principles to please and reassure the Republican base, while specific, practical, and inclusive enough to attract swing-voting independents in the state. You might call it a Contract for Colorado.

I’ve already tackled why Tancredo is not a serious candidate but would be a force to  reckon with in the context of a GOP primary. The kicker is, Tancredo knows just about where he stands. He’s a firebrand who voices radical conservative social issues at a time when, by all accounts, the state and national GOP hopes to move away from those very issues–abortion, homosexuality, and arguably immigration–that have turned independents and thinking Republicans off the GOP agenda.

The Contract with Colorado may be a great idea, or it may simply be another campaign slogan to rise and fall without ever catching on. Either way, the platform isn’t so much the highlight (for this post, anyway). Here’s why I find Rosen’s column so interesting:

The election of a Republican governor could be the start of a GOP comeback in this traditionally red state. Paving the way is what appears to be a meeting of the minds between Scott McInnis, the presumptive Republican nominee, and key players in the party. Emerging from recent meetings between McInnis, Josh Penry, Tom Tancredo, Dick Wadhams and Republican leaders in the legislature is an agreement on a platform that all parties can enthusiastically embrace.

Tancredo has managed to stay relevant and make sure that, at least in name, he’s a prominent figure in the state GOP. See what happened there? Tom Tancredo,  largely ignored since his exit from the 2008 Republican presidential primary, has a place at the table. Empty huff and puff though it may be, his gubernatorial pretensions translate as political kabuki that even this staunch anti-Tancredoist can stand back and admire.