Tancredo has entertained running for higher office a number of times in recent years, but the general consensus was that the guy is unelectable statewide in Democratic-trending Colorado. (So naturally, he ran for president instead.) He was planning to stay out of the current gubernatorial race, he says, because state Sen. Josh Penry was already in, providing the necessary conservative challenge to the leading Republican candidate, former Rep. Scott McInnis.

McInnis -- much like former Tancredo presidential rival Mitt Romney -- used to be pro-choice. McInnis explained in a recent debate, “You grow older and you have kids and grandkids and friends die and you realize how important life is.” As with Romney, that explanation isn't cutting it for conservative activists, and doubts about McInnis’ credibility were the basis of Penry’s campaign. (One important factor here: Though the state may be going blue, areas of it are bases of the evangelical movement.)

But earlier this week, Penry dropped out of the race, saying he couldn’t raise enough money to win, and didn’t want to wound McInnis if he couldn’t beat him. This opened up a spot on the right for Tancredo, who describes himself as “not a part of the Republican establishment. My allegiance is more to a philosophy than it is to a party." He added, "The Republican Party has lost its soul and it's looking in all the wrong places to find it.”

This is the guy, of course, who suggested the United States should use the Muslim holy city of Mecca as a nuclear hostage against terrorist threats. He described Miami as looking like “a third-world country.” And he said that Justice Sonia Sotomayor is a “member of the Latino KKK,” and, because he appointed her, President Obama “may indeed be a racist.” Tancredo might be the closest thing to a Rep. Pat Buchanan there has ever been -- but he’s running in an increasingly Latino state.

Meanwhile, once-popular Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter has been struggling in the polls. Ritter's surely thrilled to hear that the GOP's still set to have another intra-party ideological throwdown as it picks an opponent for him.

At this point, that’s really not that shocking coming from Perry. Facing a stiff challenge for renomination in 2010 from fellow Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the governor has moved steadily to the right, and worked to align himself with the Tea Party protests. Remember, this is the guy who publicly entertained the idea of seceding from the union back in April.

Beyond the headline quote about socialism, though, it’s worth noting that Perry fails to say almost anything true or accurate in the almost six minutes of video available online. Let’s do a quick rundown.

• Perry's claim: “This administration is interested in punishing Texas.”
• Real world: OK, obviously this isn’t technically verifiable, but for real, Gov. Perry? Because your evidence for a preposterous piece of demagoguery like that is pretty thin. Which brings us to:
• Perry's claim: The Obama administration is shipping undocumented immigrants to Presidio, Tex., taking them to the border, and releasing them on the bridge over the Rio Grande. From there, they’re faced with the choice of braving the Mexican desert or walking back into lovely Presidio. Naturally, Perry is concerned that Obama is purposefully flooding the tiny, all-American town with hardened criminals.
• Real world: You think I’m exaggerating what Perry says. And I am, but only barely. (See the video, below.) Besides the fact that none of the people deported through Presidio have been accused of any crimes, they also aren’t just released on the bridge. They’re taken over the border, where Mexican officials buy them bus tickets to their hometowns. And it’s not as if this routing was chosen to spite Texas, as Perry explicitly claims. The idea is that it breaks the smuggling cycle to deport immigrants from somewhere other than where they entered the U.S.
• Perry's claim: The Tea Parties scared Senate Democrats into opposing a public option. Says Perry, “You better believe they’re listening!”
• Real world: Look, Democrats are well-known fraidy-cats. But the claim that the Tea Parties got the public option killed in committee in the Senate ignores the fact that one of the two Senate committees in charge of healthcare, in fact, passed the public option. And it’s now about to be brought to the Senate floor for debate, where it has a reasonable chance of passing and becoming law.
• Perry's claim: Moving on briskly to environmental policy, Perry inveighs against a cap-and-trade plan to limit emissions with typical arguments about how it would ruin the economy. He then adds something that I’d never heard before. “Even the EPA director herself said, ‘If you pass that piece of legislation, it will make zero impact on our environment.’”
• Real world: Curious where this came from, I did a quick Google search. The first site to pop up was www.southfloridateaparty.com. The Tea Partiers quote EPA chief Lisa Jackson saying, “U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels.” They, and Perry, are making an obviously willful misinterpretation here. Jackson isn’t saying cap-and-trade will make zero impact. She’s saying the U.S. can’t stop climate change on its own. Misreading Jackson’s statement this way is like saying that, because one person can’t singlehandedly lift a couch, the damn thing is obviously impossible to move. May as well leave it there. How helpful of you, governor. 

That controversy has basically died down now. But there was another protest in front of the Capitol last week, this one organized by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. Again, the crowd was decently large -- about 10,000 to 20,000. But again, that wasn't enough for some people. Like, say, Bachmann and Fox News' Sean Hannity. Bachmann was on Hannity's show recently, and claimed that the actual attendance was more like 20,000 to 45,000. Well, Hannity had to back that up, of course, and he had video to do so, b-roll of a boisterous conservative crowd taking over the Capitol lawn.

Problem was, as the "Daily Show" revealed Tuesday night, it was the wrong crowd -- not the one from Bachmann's protest, but the one from two months earlier. The foliage, or lack thereof, was a dead giveaway.

Update: Hannity will reportedly address this on his show Wednesday night.