Jennifer: I don't know how many votes Tancredo swings to Romney
(I suspect it's small but -- certainly in the caucuses --
significant). But to suggest that Jim Gilchrist's Huckabee
endorsement makes Tancredo's endorsement a "wash" strikes me as
misguided, even bordering on daft. Gilchrist is a fairly obscure
figure outside of California. Tancredo is pretty securely
positioned, thanks to his presidential run, as a prominent
spokesman for hardline immigration restrictionism. A quick and
dirty measure of their influence:
Google hits for "tom tancredo" = 555,000
Google hits for "thomas tancredo" = 20,900
Tancredo sum = 576,900
Google hits for "jim gilchrist" = 126,000
Google hits for "james gilchrist" = 69,100
Gilchrist sum = 195,100
576,900 / 195,100 = about 2.957 -- in other words, Tancredo is
nearly three times better-known than Gilchrist by this measure.
(This almost surely understates the disparity, in fact. There are
1.84 million hits for the word "tancredo," almost all of them
referring to the congressman, and while there are more for
"gilchrist," that name is too common to allow an apples-to-apples
comparison -- the vast majority of "gilchrist" hits don't refer to
the Minuteman leader.)
topics:
Immigration
