For one of the few times (or maybe the only time) in my memory, doing my radio show on Sunday may have changed my mind – or at least made up my mind – about a political issue.

To start, let me say that at this point in the race for governor, I strongly prefer Tom Tancredo to the other candidates.  John Hickenlooper is a radical environmentalist leftist-in-moderate-clothing who will preside over redistricting us (non-leftists) to death if he gets the chance.  Dan Maes is an incompetent man of too many stories and too many questions even though I think he mostly has conservative gut instincts.

Tom Tancredo is a man who means what he says and says what he means.  Even though I am not in agreement with him on the aggressiveness of his anti-immigration views (not just anti-illegal immigration), I feel that he’s a trustworthy and principled guy.  I am not at all sure he has the skill set to be the CEO of a state…but I am not sure he doesn’t have it, and I am sure Dan Maes doesn’t have it.

John Hickenlooper’s popularity outside of Denver, and his ability to increase that popularity with advertising, is quite limited, especially in an anti-Democrat year like this.

It’s not absolutely inconceivable that he could be beaten, even in a three-way race, but it would require one of the other candidates to get no more than 20% of the vote, perhaps no more than 15% of the vote.

It is inconceivable to me that Dan Maes can beat Hickenlooper in a 3-way race, which means that Tancredo has the only chance.

I went into the radio show last night thinking that with enough beating up on Dan Maes, not least by the media whom I expect to put out more negative information about him, enough conservatives and Republicans could be convinced to vote for Tancredo that Tom might have a decent shot.

And that possibility left me wondering whether it makes sense for anti-leftists of all stripes to allocate some of our limited resources, whether in terms of time or money, to Tom’s campaign to try to help him to victory.  I was leaning toward saying we should.

After Sunday’s radio show, I’m not so sure.

In particular, two of the three calls we got while I was interviewing Tancredo were people who said they were long-time fans of Tom’s.  One, an older lady, said he had always been the only politician she felt she could trust and that she gave him a hug when she met him at a Republican event some months ago.  The other caller was a gentleman who was also a long-time supporter of Tom’s.  They both said, however, that they were supporting Dan Maes for governor.

While I don’t think there are nearly enough of these people to give Dan Maes a victory, they represent precisely Tom’s electoral challenge, and I do think there probably are enough of them – people who will vote for the “R” no matter what, like yellow dog Democrats, ham sandwiches, etc. – that they could keep Tancredo from winning.  In other words, they will keep the vote split too evenly for either to win.

It was remarkable when the woman said that she thought Dan Maes was a man of integrity because of his stated views on issues. It showed a lot about how when people get emotionally involved with a candidate, their choice becomes for the next few months until the election akin to a secondary religion, not susceptible to criticism based on facts or logic.  The idea that Dan Maes must be a man of integrity because he said some right things about taxes or regulation or whatever in the face of his repeated lies or errors of omission is stunning unless viewed in the sense of someone with a religious attachment to his or her candidate.

Other supporters of Maes hitched their wagon to his horse early on and want Maes to succeed because they’ve staked their own political capital and their own hopes for moving up in GOP party hierarchy on a Maes victory.  This isn’t quite religion, but the behavior of such people is the same.  They refuse to admit that their candidate is fatally flawed, if they admit that he’s flawed at all.

The more I come to believe that many Republicans, especially those who are not political junkies like me and the readers of these pages, will just vote for the Republican in November, while many others who are paying attention (as well as quite a few independent voters) will vote for Tom Tancredo, the more I think Dan Maes will still get more than 20%, but less than 1/3 of the vote.  Hickenlooper will get 40%, and that will be the end of it.

This has a couple of ramifications for me:  First, I’m starting to think that conservatives should not spend money on this race.  People get the government they deserve.  George W Bush and Republican idiocy earned us the penalty of Barack Obama.  Scott McInnis and Dan Maes, and the supporters of both, will earn us the penalty of John Hickenlooper.  Too many voters are too stupid, too loyal, or too mind-numbed to realize that not only can’t Dan Maes win, but he shouldn’t win.

Dan Maes only won the party’s nomination because Scott McInnis was so unpalatable (even before the plagiarism scandal), and because he was a fresh face.  He has absolutely zero relevant experience.  He is sort of a blank slate upon which Tea Party activists and other political newbies (not that all Tea Party activists are rookies at this game) projected their fondest hopes and dreams.  And who does that description remind you of? (Hint: he’s President of the United States)

Sure there were some real supporters of Maes, but many Maes votes were really protest votes against McInnis.  Furthermore, the undervote in the primary was likely the cause of McInnis’ loss in that those who were supporting McInnis were more disgusted than those who were supporting Maes.  Maes is the accidental nominee.  He’s the guy who got to third base on a wild pitch and two errors and is telling people he hit a triple.

But there are enough Republican voters who will say “He would have hit a triple if the pitcher hadn’t thrown the wild pitch first” that Maes will still probably get enough GOP votes to keep Tancredo from winning while Maes himself has no chance that I can see.  The state GOP won’t help. The Republican Governors’ Association won’t help.  Most of the GOP big hitters have abandoned him.  He won’t raise even half of what Tancredo raises, and Tancredo won’t raise half of what Hickenlooper raises.

The more I think about it, the more I think this race is over and that conservatives and libertarians should focus on making sure that Ken Buck, Ryan Frazier, Scott Tipton, Cory Gardner, and a slew of state legislative candidates win.  Send your money to them. Volunteer for them. Vote for Tancredo or Jaimes Brown (Libertarian) or Jason Clark (Independent).  I’ll probably vote for one of the latter two, actually, though I haven’t decided yet other than that I  know I won’t vote for Hickenlooper or Maes.)

I really like Tom Tancredo personally. I like talking with him over a beverage.  He strikes me as the most direct politician I’ve ever known.  But he’s very controversial, even divisive, including among Republicans.  He’s not difficult to demonize from a distance, though it won’t sell with people who really know him.  The problem is not that many people really know him, and he can’t get enough people to know him in two months.

It pains me to say it, but my inclination at this point – with apologies to Tom Tancredo – is to give up on the governor’s race and do everything we can to take back a majority in at least one house of the state legislature.

Indeed, to the extent that we maintain a divisive dialog among Republicans and conservatives about the governor’s race, we damage the likely enthusiasm to contribute to, volunteer for, and fill out ballots for down-ballot races which are so critical in 2010.

It should be noted that one of the people whom I mentioned earlier in terms of supporting Maes no matter what because he’s spent his own political capital and has his own in-party hopes tied to Maes’ success has posted a note to Facebook saying that he has hired a law firm to try to get Tom Tancredo disqualified from election and to make sure “the people know that Tom Tancredo is on the ballot illegally whether or not the Colorado Secretary of State agrees.”

To me, this is a fairly disgusting move, essentially saying that even if the appropriate regulator says that Tancredo’s candidacy is absolutely legitmate, they intend to tell people it isn’t. It’s reprehensible and shows what depths people will stoop to in order to win their political battles, even if the battle is in support of the worst Republican candidate I’ve seen for major office in my several years in Colorado.

The move shows that it’s not about good government or a good candidate, but just trying to beat up another conservative even if they have to effectively lie to do it.

It’s a stark contrast to Tancredo himself: when I suggested that the dynamics of the race were such that he’d have to spend a lot more time attacking Maes than Hickenlooper, Tancredo said “I hope not” and that fighting against a Republican is “the worst part of all of this.”

Maes and his supporters, not all but too many, seem to be birds of a feather, willing to say anything to win in order to extend their already undeserved 15 minutes of fame.  Maes does not deserve the support of any voter in Colorado.  Tom Tancredo does – although he clearly has his flaws and errors as well – but the dynamics of this race are such that we are still very likely to be looking at a horrific sight of John Hickenlooper moving into the governor’s mansion.

Time for Republicans and conservatives to focus on winning races we can win while doing what we can to keep the governor’s race from opening a Referendum C-type wound within the just-healing-from-that-fiasco GOP.  As far as the punishment that deserves to be doled out to those who gave us Scott McInnis and Dan Maes, we can do that after November.