Illegal Protest

Couldn’t have said this any better myself… Michelle Malkin knows how to give those right hooks to the chin for any politician who thinks they will get away with fooling the American public in this day and age of the Internet. Sheer folly!

Read the full article here at the Washington Times

Michelle Malkin   Dec 15th 2007

Every Democrat running for president thinks anti-illegal immigration activists are all racists and xenophobes. Do we really need a Republican nominee for president who thinks the same way?

Breakout Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, the soft-on-border control former governor of Arkansas, scored a jaw-dropping endorsement Tuesday from Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project. Despite a long gubernatorial record opposing employer sanctions and pushing tax-subsidized illegal alien education benefits, Mr. Huckabee won Mr. Gilchrist’s support by unveiling a last-minute, tough-sounding homeland security plan.

Trouble is, Mr. Huckabee has downright and longstanding contempt for his new bedfellows of convenience.

Just two years ago, Mr. Huckabee appeared before the open-borders Hispanic group, The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), preaching an open-door policy. According to the Arkansas News Bureau, Mr. Huckabee also criticized state legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and enhanced reporting of illegal aliens as un-Christian, un-American, irresponsible and anti-life — not to mention “inflammatory,” “race-baiting” and “demagoguery.”

Just last year, Mr. Huckabee lambasted opponents of the bipartisan “shamnesty” bill providing a mass pardon to illegal aliens as “driven by racism or nativism.” He called strict immigration enforcement — the kind he now supports — “sheer folly” in his campaign-timed book released earlier this year. He actively invited the Mexican government to establish a consulate in Arkansas — giving its office a $1 per year special office space rate — so that its foreign officials could start dispensing security-undermining matricula consular ID cards to illegal aliens for banking and employment purposes. And he’s not only for government in-state illegal alien discounts, he’s for expanding them far beyond what the federal DREAM Act proposed.

But now that he needs to establish his border control bona fides, Mr. Huckabee is all honey. “Frankly, Jim,” he said to the Minuteman Project founder at a press conference in Iowa on Tuesday, “I’ve got to tell you there were times in the early days of the Minutemen I thought, ‘What are these guys doing, what are they about?’ I confess I owe you an apology.”

It’s Mr. Gilchrist and those who allow themselves to be snowed by Mr. Huckabee’s cynical conversion who’ll be sorry and deep in apology debt, I guarantee you. Mr. Huckabee showed his true colors at the Univision Spanish-language debate over the weekend when he pandered to the crowd by lamenting “racial profiling” of immigrants — while remaining silent about catch-and-release policies that fail to detain criminal aliens who go on to commit more heinous crimes because politically correct politicians and police chiefs are more concerned with being accused of “racial profiling” than protecting the public.

I also understand that this new Gilchrist-Huckabee alliance is trying to paint anyone who doesn’t agree with Gilchrist’s endorsement of Huckabee as “charlatans” and “hypocrites” and “liars”. Oh really? Well I’m here to tell you that I don’t agree with Gilchrist on this one and my disagreement is based upon FACTS. The fact is - Huckabee is your typical election year chameleon - promising anything to get votes. We see through this but apparently Gilchrist cannot for whatever reason. Gee could it be maybe MONEY motivating Gilchrist?

Here are some excerpts from an email that was sent out by the Minuteman Project - Jack Sharp - on behalf of Gilchrist - read the thread here at Alipac:

It was Huckabee who contacted Jim Gilchrist and asked him to read his nine point plan on immigration. Jim was excited that a “top tier” candidate understood the problem and had committed himself in writing to a workable plan to solve it. Jim did not come to this decision overnight. He and his closest associates researched primary sources and considered the fact that Huckabee was the only candidate in the top three Republican choices (Huckabee, Romney, Giuliani) with an immigration law enforcement advocacy platform.

Jim wrote a list of questions for Huckabee, which he asked him in person. Jim started that meeting with Huckabee stone-faced and unconvinced, but he left it in good spirits. For the first time in several years, Jim Gilchrist was optimistic about our nation’s future. A week later, he traveled to Iowa and formally endorsed Mike Huckabee for President of the United States. No Minuteman Project money was used for this trip.

Without so much as a phone call to Jim Gilchrist asking him why, several leaders of Minuteman fringe groups viciously attacked Jim and Mike Huckabee with the hopes of getting some cheap publicity for themselves. The same people who complain when someone quotes the propaganda of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) because of its bias were quoting comments by the Club for Growth against Huckabee. The Club For Growth is the same anti-gun, pro NAFTA, Giuliani supporting Club for Growth propaganda machine that pejoratively refers to the Minutemen as “vigilantes” and “militia types”.

It only took Simcox two days to pile on and take his cheap shot at Jim Gilchrist as well. He and his friend William Gheen (ALIPAC) have started a “destroy Gilchrist and Huckabee” campaign with help from among the kooks and zealots of the movement.

William Gheen, President of ALIPAC, has had a personal grudge against Jim Gilchrist since the Minuteman Project was founded. Gheen makes his living soliciting donations from unsuspecting Americans in the name of border security. What most people don’t know is just how much of the donor money coming into his organization Gheen pockets. He has never opened his books to the public or explained what happened to the money that many hard working people have given to him. William Gheen uses fear- mongering and race baiting to scare old people out of their savings with stories of “the savage invasion from the Southern border”.

When Gilchrist founded the Minuteman Project many patriots believed that Jim was doing more for the movement than all of the dozen of other activist organizations combined. This caused the donor money to dry up for Gheen and ALIPAC, and Simcox and MCDC. And, oh, how they ranted and cursed Gilchrist and the Minuteman Project!

To preserve their “cash cows”, the naïve American donor base that has already sent them millions of dollars, Simcox, Gheen, and other so-called secure-borders advocates have to attack Gilchrist’s endorsement of Mike Huckabee. If Huckabee is elected President he promises “in writing” (www.mikehuckabee.com) to secure the borders within two years, actually enforce immigration laws, and severely punish the unscrupulous employers that hire and exploit illegal alien labor. That certainly would end our mission and the need for a minuteman movement.

Mike Huckabee and Jim Gilchrist are threats to the continued financial security and commercial enterprises of these professional extremists and charlatans who make an earnest market in soliciting public donations to stop the illegal alien invasion crisis.

Fellow patriots, it is up to you now. You can join the charlatans in their witch hunt against Jim Gilchrist and his Minuteman Project, or reserve judgment until you can research the matters yourself. Meanwhile, Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project, which does not require “membership fees” to participate in saving America, stoically plods onward, relying on only a hope, a prayer, and a vision inspired by our Founding Fathers.

It’s amazing to me to see how quickly people turn on each other and attack when we all should be on the same team. I stand on the sidelines watching all this mudslinging and I make up my own mind and without anybody else telling me what to think - I have decided that I don’t agree with Gilchrist. I am NOT taking sides. I just think Gilchrist is wrong and he will in the end find that out. A politician’s track record has much more to say than what is said during an election year.

Think about how many promises have been made in the year leading up to a Presidential election and how quickly those promises are broken. Case in point. George W Bush. Gee do you think maybe that is enough of an example for sticking it to his voter base after getting into office - especially once he became a lame duck “you can’t hurt me now” President? He’s like a drunken Roman Emperor sitting in that White House and I just pray for the day he is no longer our President and with any luck, we will actually get someone worthwhile there.. but I don’t see many candidates in the current lineup who are fit to do that except for Tom Tancredo and maybe Duncan Hunter. Everyone else is a fake on fighting illegal immgration. These two are the real deal.

If Jim Gilchrist wants to “drink the Huckabee Kool-Aid” then let him. He will find out soon enough that he will be viewed as a sell-out to the majority of patriotic Americans, including this one.

Here are some other views on why Mike Huckabee is not your friend if you are a patriotic American who wants illegal immigration stopped .

Chuck Baldwin of Renew America writes :

In addition, Dr. Jerome Corsi reports that “Financial inducements arranged by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to establish a Mexican consular office in Little Rock may have violated state law, according to an Arkansas attorney.”

Writing for World Net Daily, Dr. Corsi exposed the fact that Mike Huckabee “worked with some of the state’s most prominent and politically powerful businesses to establish the [Mexican] consulate as a magnet for drawing illegal immigrants to the state to accept low-paying jobs.”

Over at “Know Your Rino” you can find some more enlightening factoids about this Huckster guy in great detail for all you “charlatans” out there who see through this charade. Some excerpts:

‘National media folks like David Brooks, dealing in surface appearances only, rave about what a nice guy Huckabee is, and a moral exemplar to boot. If they only did a little homework, they would discover a guy with a thin skin, a nasty vindictive streak, and a long history of imbroglios about questionable ethics,’ Quin Hillyer wrote yesterday at Spectator.org.”

“Trevino confirmed he was state director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, also known as LULAC, an activist group strongly advocating for rights of Hispanic immigrants in the U.S., when on Oct. 3, 2003, he accompanied Huckabee in a state airplane to visit [President Vicente] Fox in Mexico.” Source: Jerome Corsi, www.WorldNetDaily.com, 11/1/07

‘This arrangement to bring a Mexican consulate to Little Rock and the manner in which it occurred amounts to a “consul-gate,” ’ Sexton told WND. ‘I’m an Arkansas citizen, why doesn’t the state lease me some property and furniture for $1 per year?’

“Robert Trevino, commissioner of Arkansas Rehabilitation Services, told WND he and Huckabee helped arrange state and private financial support to induce Mexico to establish the consulate as a business development ‘quid pro quo.’

“Trevino signed on July 7, 2006, a ‘Facilities Use Agreement’ with Mexican consular officials to rent state government office space for $1 a year on the second floor of the Arkansas Rehabilitation Services building at 26 Corporate Hills in Little Rock.”

“Sexton points to Arkansas law, which appears to prohibit state agencies, including Arkansas Rehabilitation Services, from sub-leasing government space.

“Ark. Code Ann. § 22-2-114(C)(i) provides: ‘After July 1, 1975, no state agency shall enter into or renew or otherwise negotiate a lease between itself as lessor or lessee and a nongovernmental or other government lessor or lessee.’

“ ‘Even more offensive, there was nothing in the lease or other agreements that would have prevented the Mexican consulate from providing legal assistance to illegal aliens,’ Sexton told WND. ‘We have information that the Mexican consulate operating out of the Arkansas Rehabilitation Facility was providing legal assistance even to Mexican illegal aliens who were accused of committing violent crimes in Arkansas.’

“Sexton said he and other critics have ‘called on the Arkansas attorney general’s office to set the lease aside and recover the value of the lease.’ …”

Need we say more? Apparently Jim Gilchrist DID NOT do very good homework and I believe he’s made the worst decision of his career. I used to support Gilchrist and considered him a victim in the struggle to maintain control of MMP. I’m having second thoughts on that one now as well. WHAT WAS HE THINKING you have to wonder?