Interrupting my hiatus yet again, I present here an unintentionally amusing line from Hugh Hewitt as he complains about Terry Jeffrey’s preference for Tancredo over the Terrible Trio:

But encouraging the sort of destructive crusade that Congressman Tancredo wants to lead should be labelled exactly what it is:  The triumph of posture over purpose.

So wrote the man who is organising a grassroots revolt to force the GOP to commit political suicide over a meaningless non-binding resolution on the surge.  There is absolutely no posturing involved here, let me tell you!

But just consider Hewitt’s reaction to Jeffrey’s (obviously half-hearted) support for a second-tier candidate.  To support anyone outside of the Terrible Trio appears to him to be something akin to insanity.  He literally cannot fathom that voting for one of the few reasonably, actually conservative candidates in the race is something other than a “protest” vote.  Presumably, voting for Tancredo would be a protest vote under normal circumstances, but under normal circumstances there is usually a top-tier candidate who genuinely and reliably holds at least some conservative views.  (If someone cites Giuliani’s opposition to crime as proof of his supposed conservatism one more time, I will lose all patience.)  Certainly, on immigration Tancredo is light years ahead of the top tier and is the better conservative candidate on immigration, with the possible exceptions of Hunter and Paul, who have also been reliably opposed to the open borders crowd.  In the top four, you have three pro-immigration candidates and Romney, the last of whom has shown a willingness to “discover” convictions as and when he needs them. 

In fact, Tancredo is probably the best-known elected Republican opponent of amnesty and open borders, while most of the major candidates are either pro-amnesty or have been sitting on the sidelines of the debate all along.  It may or may not be true that opposition to mass immigration is a loser in general elections (I strongly doubt that it is a losing issue), but in the GOP primaries it will be a burning issue.  Mr. Bush’s support for amnesty has been the chief reason why most conservatives around the country have lost confidence in him.   

From my perspective, Tancredo has been entirely wrong on the war, but for GOP primary voters he is in many ways a perfect fit for their issues.  Instead of the politically deadly combination of being vaguely critical of the war and pro-amnesty, as Hagel and Brownback are, Tancredo is pro-war and staunchly against any amnesty or amnesty-lite.  Plus, religiously, he is the reverse Brownback, a Catholic who became an evangelical, which can probably only help him in the primaries.     

Whether he could be a successful candidate is quite another story–obviously, the money and organisation of the major candidates are going to be superior, and most of them are almost certainly more accomplished campaigners.  But a Tancredo nomination is not nearly as far-fetched and ridiculous as the shills, The Wall Street Journal and the rest of the open borders lobby would like to think. 

I take Jim Antle’s point that a failed Tancredo ticket, should it ever somehow come to that, could do more harm to the causes of border security and controlling immigration than good, but no good will come to either of those causes if both nominees next year are pro-amnesty.