Tancredo Not Running for President - Yet

Despite four trips to early primary and caucus states this year, Colorado's Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo says he is not running for president.

The Washington Times reports that Tancredo will run unless a top-tier Republican candidate takes a strong position on cracking down on illegal immigration and lowering legal immigration:

"My task is to get one of them to take this on," Mr. Tancredo told about 50 members of the Christian Coalition of Iowa who gathered in a community center in Cedar Falls on Friday night. "If they don't do that, if I cannot find someone to do that, if they just give lip service to it and not the heart, yeah, I will run. I will do that."

Tancredo believes the reception he received in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Georgia are an indication of how important the issue of immigration has become.

Comments

[Aakash]

Just posted a comment the other day at Smash-mouth's entry on Congressman Duke Cunnginham the other day, in which I cited this entry at the liberal weblog of The American Prospect. Tancredo/Dornan '08??

A Tancredo presidential run, involving Bay Buchanan and the Brigades, would be quite exciting. While he may not win the nomination (or could he?), his candidacy could be like the vibrant and eventful Buchanan 1996 campaign, which set the agenda for the GOP presidential primary race. He doesn't have as big of a national name recognition as Pat did, however, which could present a problem. We need a strong conservative candidate to run, and to win the nomination.

[Doug]

I would love for Tancredo to be President. I am sure it's been a long time since we've had a lowly Representative elected, but he is the only one who seems to recognize the enormous problem of border security.

No one else seems to care about border security, or rather they all take on a defeatist attitude and say that border security is impossible, which our Homeland Security Chief just did as reported by the WaPo. This could depend on the definition of "border security," but this attitude is not in the American spirit! It IS possible to substantially decrease the amount of illegal immigrants.

And by the way, he should be on The O'Reilly Factor tonight.