It doesn’t matter what Stephen K. Bannon does or doesn’t do for Tom Tancredo. The point is made. The bell is rung. Perception is a headline, and reality is a footnote.

The architect of Donald Trump’s political rise visited with the former congressman in Colorado Springs recently. The summit put a new seal of approval on Tancredo, a political tornado who has carried the alt-right’s national flag – by himself at times – for the last 20 years.

A failed presidential and gubernatorial candidate on his resume, Tancredo is suddenly fresh again. And you can bet Colorado Republicans are thinking about what Bannon’s vast conservative outreach could mean here, even if rational minds tell them to forget about it.

And you can bet they are thinking about Bannon’s wealthy benefactor, Robert Mercer, the New Mexico-raised hedge fund billionaire who could direct millions of dollars into Colorado with little more than a phone call from Bannon. Whether he will, whether he won’t, it doesn’t matter, if GOP candidates are scared enough to act on it.

The message is clear: March to the alt-right or face the music with the activist base. With Tancredo’scandidacy, Bannon’s trumpet and Mercer’s money, that’s a lot of uncertainty to risk in a year some Republicans might be tempted to distance themselves from their president.

The lack of certainty, ironically, is where the certainty ends.

Bannon, the leader of the Breitbart News who helped put Trump in the White House, is no longer in the president’s tent, dismissed only a few weeks ago as the president’s chief strategist in the wake of protests by white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va.

We don’t know yet whether Bannon will be friend or foe to Trump. Bannon was in Alabama the day before visiting Tancredo to help religious right hero Roy Moore, who won the GOP primary for the Senate vacancy left by Jeff Sessions. Trump backed the interim senator, Luther Strange, opposite Bannon and, presumably, his base.

Bannon got behind the candidacy of a political nobody, Dave Brat in Virginia, in 2014 who crushed Eric Cantor, the first time a sitting U.S. House majority leader has lost a re-election.

The Washington Post called it “a defeat so unexpected that it shocked the unshockable political establishment, which called it one of the greatest political upsets of modern times.”

But it didn’t shock Breitbart, which pounded on Republicans’ talk of immigration reform and rebranded it as “amnesty,” which drove passions and votes.

If it could happen to Cantor, it could also crush lesser candidates who get in Bannon’s way.

Tancredo wears a hard line on immigration reform like a football jersey. He even contributes an occasional op-ed to Breitbart News, but as a movement leader he deserves a statue on the front lawn.

Walker Stapleton has the least to gain or lose. Trump voters aren’t his voters to begin with. The optics overwhelm the politics. He is a cousin to the Bush presidential family, and hard feelings linger with the Trump crowd. Jeb Bush clashed with Trump during the campaign. and Trump is sore about the reluctant acceptance from the last two Republicans n the White House, both named Bush. Stapleton is to Republican tradition what jelly beans were to Ronald Reagan, highly compatible.

Doug Robinson is the nephew of Mitt Romney, so cross him off an alt-right voter’s wish list. Robinson voted for Trump, where his uncle challenges Trump constantly, saying in August that the president’s remarks on Charlottesville “caused racists to rejoice.”

George Brauchler has swagger with the GOP base for seeking the death penalty against Aurora theater James Holmes, who carried an arsenal of legally purchased guns into an Aurora movie theater where he killed 12 people and wounded at least 70 five years ago. Brauchler just as forcefully defends gun rights.

Brauchler was on the radio back in May boasting of his vote for Trump, calling Trump’s first 100 days productive and bashing liberals and the media. Brauchler said, “We’re all in pretty damn good hands right now.”

It’s no wonder Tom Ready posted, “OUR NEXT GOVERNOR …” on Brauchler’s campaign Facebook page. Ready is the very conservative former candidate for Pueblo County Commission who brought his questions about whether the Sandy Hook massacre was staged to Colorado politics in 2014.

Entrepreneur and former state legislator Victor Mitchell has said publicly he didn’t vote for Trump last year, opting for independent candidate Evan McMullin. He doubled down and said he wouldn’t campaign with Trump, either.

Steve Barlock was co-chair of Trump’s campaign in Denver County and has promised a state government that keeps stride with the Trump administration.

But if we’ve learned anything since the rise of Bannon, it’s that smoke and mirrors doesn’t necessarily rule out a fire.

The Washington Post predicted the future last weekend:

“Stoked by former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and his incendiary media platform, Breitbart News, a new wave of anti-establishment activists and contenders are emerging to plot a political insurrection that is with Trump in spirit but entirely out of his – or anyone’s – control.”