Across the country, Republicans have built a narrative around being unified in their efforts to create an opposition to the Democrats, who control Congress and the White House. Time magazine, however, is fascinated by the turmoil inside Colorado’s GOP, which has been magnified by the governor’s race and former Congressman Tom Tancredo, the firebrand ex-Republican running with the obscure American Constitution Party.

As Republican nominee Dan Maes struggles to be taken seriously, Tancredo’s candidacy has caused Rasmussen Reports to move the race from “solid” Democrat to merely “leans” Democrat, not the best news for John Hickenlooper going into the final weeks of the race.

Slate is somewhat befuddled by the rise of Tancredo, pointing to his single-issue presidential campaign in 2008–an effort to turn the primary season that year into a debate about immigration. As Slate recalls, Tancredo was “Mr. ‘Miami is a Third World Country'” and “Mr. Literacy Test for Voting.”

Proving predictable, Tancredo continued to hammer on the immigration issue during the 9News/Denver Post debate last night, once again chiding Hickenlooper for creating a “sanctuary city” for undocumented immigrants while Hick defended his record.

“At a certain point, I don’t disagree for a moment that this is a serious problem that faces not just Colorado but the entire country,” Hickenlooper said, of illegal immigration. “You can’t have a system where people randomly break the law. But I think it’s only going to really get solved on a national basis.”