Tancredo riff splits Buck and Norton

An off-the-cuff riff from former Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo, dubbing President Barack Obama a greater threat to America than Al Qaeda, has sent ripples through the Colorado Senate race and pushed an unexpected GOP candidate to embrace his fiery rhetoric.

Buck quickly distanced himself from the comments, and a YouTube video showed that the Republican primary hopeful did not applaud Tancredo’s remarks. “I love Tom, but I don’t always agree with him. I don’t agree that the greatest threat to the country is the man in the Oval Office,” Buck said, noting that Tancredo “tends to exaggerate sometimes.”

But it was former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, the favored Senate candidate of national Republicans who has been nudged to the right by Buck’s feisty campaign, who jumped to Tancredo’s defense.

Norton’s decision to stick up for Tancredo, who has endorsed Buck and openly criticized Norton’s campaign, shows how completely the Republican Senate primary has become a battle for the hardest-line conservative credentials. And Democrats are eagerly taking advantage of the race to the right. – More -