The Next Problematic Election

Posted on November 9, 2005 in The Orange

….occurs on December 6 2005 for the seat vacated by Orange County Congressman Christopher Cox.

The candidate faces left against a field of blue, towards an audio button with his message. An American Eagle tops the right hand column, over a menu describing his views. There are no issues discussed on the page except one: immigration. In the upper right hand corner, a line of armed Minutemen walk, silhouetted against a brilliant sunset.

Elsewhere on the page is this photo, which the Gilchrist engine apparently promotes as the actual face of the only “problem” Gilchrist cares about:

Racist? He and his wingnut followers will spin around that one for hours.

Jim has a plan:

Some people believe that America’s illegal immigration problem is too big to solve. They therefore think that the only feasible solution is basically to do nothing–since things have seemingly gotten so far beyond the point of remedy.

Even the sheer size of our borders, themselves, causes some people to conclude that our borders are indefensible against invasion, incursion, and illicit trafficking–and that the steady flow of illegal aliens is thus unstoppable.

I believe otherwise. I also know that we MUST do a better job of securing our borders if we are to preserve our national security and sovereignty.

Thirty six thousand troops will guard the border from all those dangerous aliens. Each will have three days of training because Jim doesn’t think they need to know the niceties of being a Border Patrol agent. They just need to shoot a gun.

Jim has a strange, strange history. Though he has won endorsements from such infamous wackos as “Big-Mouth Bob” Dornan, Barbara Coe, and Alan Keyes, Gilchrist is known to have cast his support behind Green Party candidate Peter Camejo in the 2002 election because he liked Camejo’s tax the rich plan. He’s advocated wealth redistribution. The only illegal aliens he wants to deport, he says, are actual criminals (hard to read this one since being in the USA without papers is a crime.)

His supporters are

concerned with his erratic behavior, consisting of strange and unsubstantiated allegations that the Green Party, spearheaded by Orange County activist Duane Roberts, is a terrorist group that attempted to suppress his free speech rights and murder an 80-year-old woman in Garden Grove on May 25th.

When asked to explain the contradiction between his more privately held progressive views and his public rants that appeal to his supporters by scapegoating immigrants, catering to their vile racism and presenting himself as a “rock-ribbed Reagan Republican” (even though he’s running as the American Independent Party candidate and his supporters believe that most Republicans are “traitors”) Gilchrist becomes unglued, face flushed with anger almost to the point of tears, and rants about Greens as terrorists and would-be murderers….

When approached on September 30 and asked to substantiate his allegations of attempted murder, Gilchrist had to be restrained and escorted out the door by a huge campaign aide, again without giving answers.

Yes, Jim is all over the board and he has a temper, too.

Yet signs touting his candidacy stand all over South County. Most people have no idea who Jim Gilchrist is or what he stands for, much less how violent and volatile he appears when challenged in public.

Alas, there’s an ant-on-the-tongue-of-an-anteater’s chance that a liberal much less a Democrat will get elected by residents of the gated communities, micro ranches, and subdivisions of South Orange County. The scary part is that in a fragmented election, Republican Gilchrist could win here.

I’ll be watching Jim.