Rep. Tom Tancredo has announced that he will not seek a sixth term in Congress in 2008 but will continue his long-shot campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. His reelection to another term in Congress would have been a slam dunk, whereas he freely admits that he has virtually no chance to actually win his party’s nomination for president. What’s going on?

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The pundits and political analysts who believe Tancredo blundered in choosing an impossible goal — the presidential campaign — while forsaking a slam-dunk reelection to Congress need to follow Ayn Rand’s admonition: “examine your premises.”

Tancredo’s campaigns have never been about winning or holding onto office. Tancredo’s political life is all about “moving the ball forward,” the ball in this instance being the protection of national sovereignty and the struggle to resist and ultimately defeat radical Islamic terrorism. He believes he can do that best by leaving Congress for a larger stage.

From the beginning his presidential campaign has been about influencing the 2008 Republican nominating process and the party platform on immigration control. He knew he did not have a serious shot at winning the party’s nomination, but he could steer the party away from the Bush administration’s disastrous flirtation with amnesty. He has already achieved that goal within the Republican party and even Nancy Pelosi now runs from the amnesty lobby.

Contrary to pundits, it is not Tancredo who is on a slippery slope to political oblivion. John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Mel Martinez, and other Republican insiders miscalculated public support for a new amnesty program when they followed Bush on “comprehensive reform,” but Tom Tancredo got it right. But unfortunately, the Washington political establishment will forgive a backbench maverick like Tancredo for being wrong on a major issue, but they cannot forgive him for being right when it embarrasses the hell out of them.

Tancredo has decided to give up the Washington party game, and he is now mapping a new course that depends not on backroom deals within a dysfunctional party leadership but on the power of nonpartisan grassroots activism. That citizen activism defeated two “done deal” amnesty bills backed by powerful coalitions. The question of the hour is, can that citizen activism be organized and focused to actually enact needed legislation as well as block bad legislation. The congressional stalemate on immigration policy will not last forever and there may be irresistible pressure to act when a new president is sworn in on January 20, 2009.