American-Constitution Party

Colorado Republicans were on their way to an easy win for Governor, after 4 years of Democrat Bill Ritter. Then frontrunner Scott McInnis became immersed in a plagiarism scandal. Second-place runner Dan Maes, the more conservative Tea Party favorite, never caught on. His campaign has been regarded as lackluster.

Now a major development is threatening to rock the Colorado race.

Showdown! To GOP contenders: Leave by Noon Monday

The Denver Post reports this morning:

Former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo demanded today that the two GOP gubernatorial candidates drop out of the race.

If they don’t, he said he will run for governor as an American Constitution Candidate, a move likely to split the Republican Party in November’s general election.

“There’s nothing left to split. The reality is that with the two candidates we have, we will lose the general election,” Tancredo said in an interview.

Tancredo called upon Scott McInnis and Dan Maes to commit to leaving the race Aug. 11, just hours following the results of the primary. That way a Republican vacancy committee could appoint a replacement. Tancredo said he doesn’t care if the substitute is not himself.

He gave both candidates until noon on Monday to release public statements agreeing to his terms.

Obama worse than Soviets remark a precursor to race?

For many years, Tancredo served as President of the libertarian Independence Institute out of Golden, Colorado.

More recently, he received national attention and excited rightwing libertarians with his statement at a Tea Party rally, that Obama was as big a threat to the United States as Communism and Islamo-Fascism. From LR July 9:

"We had that threat [from the former Soviet Union] and we survived it. Later we found out we had another threat to our way of life and that was al-Qaeda. We found that out on 9/11.

But I firmly believe this... the greatest threat to the country that was put together by the founding fathers is the guy that is in the White House today."