Scott McInnis may be "in it to win it," but Tom Tancredo is in it to spin it. If the former congressman can figure out a way to get into the gubernatorial race alongside "Musings" McInnis and Dan Maes, the dark-horse candidate who was at his most popular when he was completely unknown, he will. "I can't leave it at this," Tancredo said of that lineup during Saturday's annual ATF event sponsored by the Independence Institute, which he once headed. "I won't."
Maes stopped by the shoot-em-up party, too, and although no one took aim at him — not with a shotgun, anyway — Tancredo is investigating ways he could get into the race he'd contemplated joining a year ago, back when Josh Penry was convinced to drop out for the good of the Colorado Republican Party...and McInnis. Now it's too late to enter the primary as a write-in candidate (there's a sixty-day deadline to register for that), and even if the winner of the August 10 vote were convinced to drop out, the Republican committee that would get to pick a replacement candidate is unlikely to tap Tancredo, no matter how well he's polling.
And so he's looking at other options. Although Tancredo wouldn't elaborate, he said he thinks that after a consultation with an election attorney, he may have some kind of announcement in a week or so. And you can count on it being entirely his own; unlike McInnis, Tancredo is a true original who always takes credit for what he says, even if it's as outrageous as the suggestion that the U.S. bomb Mecca.
The shoot-em-up also brought out Senate candidate Ken Buck, who's leading Jane Norton in the polls — despite her recent ad suggesting that he "man up." That's bold talk coming from someone married to former U.S. Attorney Mike Norton, said one straight shooter on Saturday.
Either Jane Norton or Buck would be a more likely GOP gubernatorial choice than Tancredo. And then there's Jon Caldara, the current head of the Independence Institute, whose fans put up a "Caldara for Governor" Facebook page last year and who pronounced on Saturday that he has "the lack of integrity" needed to be a gubernatorial candidate. "There's nothing more fun than pissing off liberals," he added.
But right now, the problems in his party are only delighting those liberals. And so, as he welcomed everyone to Saturday's event, Caldara suggested that at the end of it, all the registered Republicans "were going to stand in a circle and shoot each other."
Yes, the Republican party's going straight to hell. Here's more proof: The name of Caldara's Channel 12 show was recently changed from Independent Thinking to Devil's Advocate.
The devil's in the details.
This land: The Tea Party political movement found its voice last year, and now Western Slope country singer Joyce Shaffer appears to have set that voice to music.
With tunes like "Takin' Back Our Country" and "American Soldier," Shaffer writes the songs that make the whole world hold up misspelled signs.
Just check out these patriot-lovin' lyrics from "Takin'," which Shaffer delivers in a YouTube video while standing in front of a John Deere tractor.
"Hopscotch on sidewalks, kites in the air, family drives on Sunday, blue ribbons at state fairs/Those are things of days gone by/When I realize how much we've lost, it makes me want to cry/We're takin' back our country, and that's a fact/If it doesn't sound good to you, let us help you pack."
Three songs have been available for download at Shaffer's website, www.joyceusa.net, and now she has released a fourth, titled, "Hey, Calderon!" Dedicated "to citizens of Arizona," Shafer's publicist says, and written to support the state's new immigration law, the song is "a fire across the bow of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's address to Congress on America's treatment of Mexican illegal aliens here in the United States."
Sing it around the campfire. It's the new "Kumbaya."
