Is Gilchrist An Endorsement A Candidate Should Embrace?

It's not difficult, after a few Google and Nexus searches, to conclude that Minuteman Civil Defense League founder Jim Gilchrist has a penchant for saying what he thinks, and for saying things that might give more polite company some pause.

He is also controversial within the movement, having been fired by the Minuteman board this year after an internal dispute.

Tuesday, Huckabee said that “No one can question Jim's commitment to this country and the immigration problem. He has mobilized a group of volunteers to go to the border and draw attention to the issue of immigration."

As recently as 2005, Mr. Gilchrist was prone to the type of statement that makes most opponents of illegal immigration wince, hitting all the stereotypes that such opponents are nativists.

For Gilchrist, the immigration problem is cultural and ethnic.

To the Orange County Weekly, he said that in 40 years, "The United States is going to have 100 tribes with 100 languages and no common bond." On his website that year, Gilchrist wrote that undocumented immigrants "and their offspring will be the dominant population in the U.S. and will have made such inroads into the political and social systems that they will have more influence than the U.S. Constitution over how the U.S. is governed. That ugly consequence is already taking place."

He has decried the "colonization" of parts of California by Mexican immigrants. He supports mandatory testing of immigrants for a variety of diseases, urges candidates to form a cabinet-level "Department of Mexico" to deal with the immigration problem, and, notably, whether candidates support in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.

Mr. Huckabee once signed such a bill.

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Comments

Wow, you didn't get any facts right. You didn't do any research, did you? How high were you when you wrote this?

Posted by Jack Sharpe | December 12, 2007 8:58 AM

funny thing is that Huckabee says that these people are racists, now he is so happy to have their endorsement.

Posted by John Galt | December 12, 2007 9:20 AM

No National Minuteman Group has endorsed Mike Huckabee.

One individual Minuteman has personally endorsed him.

For the sake of clarity, it is important to note that the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), the nation's largest Minuteman organization, is a 501(C)4 non-profit organization and cannot and does not endorse any candidate for public office. MCDC is not associated with Mr. Jim Gilchrist, who today endorsed Mike Huckabee for president.

Jim Gilchrist’s erstwhile Minuteman Project is itself an organization which by its own representations as a non-profit civic group, cannot legally endorse candidates. It does not have any volunteers who observe illegal border activity. It has no border fence building projects. Jim Gilchrist here speaks only for Jim Gilchrist, he does not speak for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, nor is he nationally representative of most patriots in the "Minuteman movement" – who under no circumstances could ignore the failed record nor endorse the duplicitous “plan” recently rolled out by candidate Mike Huckabee. The national media needs to recognize that Jim Gilchrist’s endorsement is his own personal statement, nothing more.

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps emphasizes policy dealing with national border security. The only "plan" to ensure border security that is acceptable to our constituency would be a candidate policy statement declaring that his first act as President will be to hold a press conference and announce to the American people an executive order to immediately deploy and fund 30,000 National Guard personnel to the U.S. Borders (25,000 to the southern border and 5,000 to the northern border) to complement a massive increase in U.S. Border Patrol Agent field personnel, and a bilateral effort to secure our frontiers, smash the drug cartels, shut down the human smugglers and protect the public safety of the citizens who reside along the borders on both sides of our national boundaries.

Unlike this last-minute opportunism attempted by Huckabee, many of the other GOP presidential candidates have actually helped push the issue of national border security forward for some time. Tom Tancredo’s many years of hard work on the border crisis and illegal immigration issues have all the candidates striving to sound like him. Duncan Hunter can take personal credit for getting the highly effective San Diego border fence built. Ron Paul has been to the border with us first hand and aggressively pushed positive border legislation. Alan Keyes has done more than anyone to support the organizational development of MCDC, and personally participated in the Minuteman Border Fence Groundbreaking – advancing a citizen’s construction effort which has forced Congress to finally get the Feds building physical border fence.

Only one Minuteman group is conducting regular multi-state border security efforts, building fence and aggressively monitoring Washington DC: Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. We would like to extend an invitation to all the presidential candidates, Republican and Democrat, to come to the border and see what is really happening on our nation’s frontier. Not to take the safe little government photo-op helicopter ride, but see the lay-up sites full of trash and debris. See the rape trees. See the violent crime in the border towns. Walk on the pathways of destroyed environmental terrain trampled by tens of thousands of invading foreign migrants. See what the American elites’ support of broken borders, unfettered illegal immigration and sanctuary cities is doing to our fellow Americans who live on our borderlands, and how these failed policies imperil our nation’s safety, security and prosperity.

Posted by Lew | December 12, 2007 9:42 AM

I think Gilchrist is endorsing Huckabee, not the other way around. It shows that Huckabee will enforce the law as President.
When Huckabee was a pastor, he intergrated his baptist church. He received huge support from African-Americans as Gov of Arkansas, while a conservative Republican! I haven't seen him demonize immigrants, if he did I wouldn't support him. So no, Huckabee isn't a racist, but will the leftwing media assume the worst about Republicans?
(No I'm not part of his campaign)

Posted by voter | December 12, 2007 12:53 PM

It is clear the ANTI Immigration Reform groups are splintering. The minuteman movement is splintering. It has long been known that Gilchrist, Simcox and Schwilk are madmen and crooks.
http://immigrationmexicanamerican.blogspot.com/2007/11/minuteman-fence-scam.html

Now the ANTIs themselves are up in arms at Gilchrist´s latest escapade.
http://immigrationmexicanamerican.blogspot.com/2007/12/anti-leaders-rally-against-huckabee.html

With all this said, what I find most surprising is Roy Beck´s change of heart re: Huckabee.

Malkin (who I never agree with) and I agree on this, per her latest blog:
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/12/11/minuteman-project-founder-endorses-huckabee/

Posted by Dee | December 12, 2007 1:29 PM

"No, I'm not part of his campaign."

Could have fooled me.

Posted by Gerard | December 12, 2007 10:53 PM

"enforce the law" without regard for any potential inhumane consequences is typical of the right-wing "christians".

The first commenter only attacked the messenger. Is it going to take a while before the general public wakes up to the general low discourse of the anti-immigrant movement (with the Minutemen are)? They're low, face it.

Posted by 34534534 | December 13, 2007 1:31 AM