Saturday, July 26, 2008

Cheap smear on Allen West

Last month, I interviewed retired Lt. Col. West, the Republican candidate for Congress in Florida's 22nd District. Today, one of Col. West's supporters e-mailed me a New Republic article about the candidate that is truly a disgrace to that magazine's reputation.

However, the article is not all bad. For instance, I didn't realize that Col. West reads Bastiat in his spare time. Excellent! And there is one passage in the article that I found particularly informative:
[T]he national party showed little interest in rallying behind someone so controversial. Looking at the giant ziggurats of cash the Democrats were building to protect their newly won seats, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) frantically searched for candidates who were safe and, most crucially, had access to a lot of money. In the 22nd -- a district the Democrats took in 2006 but which still boasts more registered Republicans than Democrats -- a scion of a famous Florida political family, a well-connected state representative, and the popular mayor of cash-soaked Boca Raton were all begged to run. All declined.
Now, wait a doggone minute. If Col. West is "controversial," isn't it because it was his job to actually fight the war that the national party supported? To hell with "safe" candidates and famous "scions." Here the GOP has the flesh-and-blood refutation of all those "chickenhawk" slurs, a heroic character straight out of a Tom Clancy novel whose candidacy instantly makes FL-22 a contest worthy of national interest, and yet the NRCC "frantically searched" for somebody else -- anyone else -- to run for this seat? Outrageous!

That is the perfect capsule summary of what's wrong with the GOP HQ people in Washington. Every conservative who's tired of the politically tone-deaf idiots who are running the Republican Party into the ground ought to go make a contribution to Col. West's campaign today.

UPDATE: Now that I think about it, has anybody told the NBRA about this? Does Angela McGlowan know about it? After all the work they've done to recruit black Republicans, to see the NRCC actually working against a black Republican is insane. Somebody needs to be raising holy unshirted hell with the national party about this situation.

5 comments:

  1. Surely you jest. Black political players in both parties are too busy positioning themselves to help someone else.

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  2. Exactly right McCain! Democrats have been useing the race card against Republicans-Conservatives since as long as i can remember(32Years old here.) It would be hard for libs to use that charge, and conservatives may even get more of the black vote if the Republicans would just get some black candidates. I know there are black Republicans. Why the hell are they not recruited to run?

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  3. Thanks for this great piece. I was sitting about 40 feet from that despicable Eve lady at a West speech. He was extremely graceful to her, even when she had her cell phone blare in middle of his speech. But she started scribbling like mad when the Pres. of that GOP club made a joking remark she thought she could twist. She is truly a disgrace to the magazine and will be the subject of much fodder in the coming week.

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  4. Seems like that TNR reporter, Eve Fairbanks, has quite a checkered – and racist – past. One that is filled with both racial and political bias.

    http://journals.aol.com/thebookofcharger/TheBookofCharger/entries/2006/07/26/stupid-racist-reporter-tricks-eve-fairbanks/562

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  5. Career Republicans, like career Democrats, are frightened by anyone who might galvanize the hoi polloi and take away their for-granted power. That's why Lt. Col. West (ret) should win office, because he's outside the out-of-touch, old-school, careerist venue.

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