And so, despite tea partiers across America having made peace with the idea of fighting the GOP establishment in primaries instead of via destructive, counterproductive third-party runs, here comes Tanc trading on his grassroots cred to argue, I guess, that the rules should be different for him. Says Baseball Crank, “So, Tom Tancredo wants to be Charlie Crist. Who knew?”

Tancredo, who claims he has a better chance of beating Democrat and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper even in a three-way race, said he wants the GOP nominee to withdraw after the Aug. 10 primary if he’s polling behind Hickenlooper, otherwise he’s jumping in.

Former Rep. Scott McInnis and entrepreneur Dan Maes are running for the GOP nomination. Both are troubled by publicity problems — McInnis for allegedly plagiarizing and Maes for campaign finance violations.

Tancredo’s proposal led Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dick Wadhams to blast the insurgent on a morning radio show out of Denver.

“What’s your agenda? What are you going to talk about? Impeaching (President) Obama and bombing Mecca and all that stuff?” Wadhams asked in a lengthy debate on the Peter Boyles Show on KHOW in Denver…

“You hate the people you’ve got on the ballot. You dislike them both. You don’t trust either one,” Tancredo said, claiming that Wadhams called McInnis “untrustworthy” and Maes “a joke.”

In case you think Hickenlooper’s some sort of lock to win against the current GOP candidates in the race, Rasmussen’s latest has him up two points against McInnis and three points again Maes. Once Tancredo’s in the race, though, and the most conservative voters start peeling off? Figure Hickenlooper leads from anywhere by eight to 10. Simply wonderful.

As a sneak preview of what his campaign will look like, here he is last week on Fox News pushing the centrist-pleasing, majority-building argument that Obama should be impeached because he’s more dangerous than Al Qaeda. Megyn Kelly is appropriately aghast, which will no doubt feature prominently in Hickenlooper’s attack ads. I can see ’em now: “Tancredo: Too far right for Fox News.”