Tag Archives: Allen West

April 1, 2013 · 11:42 AM

Do As We Say, Not As We Do

 

Well, the upside (for them) is that no one can accuse them of being another Michele Bachmann.

The Huffington Post

After Todd Akin lost the Missouri Senate race to Democrat Claire McCaskill in November, he had one final piece of business to take care of as an outgoing member of the House of Representatives — giving piles of government money to his staff. Akin nearly doubled the salaries of his House staffers in the quarter after his defeat, according to the website LegiStorm, which tracks congressional pay.

Only retiring Democrat Gary Ackerman of New York was more generous with public money, barely topping Akin’s 98 percent increase in pay, the website shows. Allen West, a Tea Party favorite from South Florida, was the fourth biggest giver of taxpayer bonuses after he lost reelection to Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.). Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) was the third most generous, according to LegiStorm.

West and Akin routinely decried wasteful and out-of-control government spending, calling for major cuts to social programs.

Of the top 10 members of Congress most generous with year-end bonuses, nine were Republicans, and 14 of the top 20 were, not coincidentally, on their way out of the House.

Republican Reps. Devin Nunes (Calif.), Steve Austria (Ohio), Steve LaTourette (Ohio), Bob Turner (N.Y.), Roscoe Bartlett (Md.) and Jon Runyan (N.J.) rounded out the top 10 in 2012.

When Democrats lost a historic number of seats in 2010, outgoing members of the party lavished their staff with unspent money, with 18 of the top 20 givers carrying a D next to their name.

House staffers typically get bonuses at the end of the year depending on how much is left in the office budget, but on average in 2012 those bumps were just 16.4 percent for Republicans and 15.1 percent for Democrats. Bonuses are not labeled as such in the congressional books, but LegiStorm is able to count them by comparing the increase in reported salary in the fourth quarter to the average of the first three quarters.

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November 20, 2012 · 11:52 AM

Allen West Finally Concedes!

Why was Allen West so myopic after the 2012 elections in Florida?

Why did he continue to contest the vote count in specific counties?  I’m not sure we’ll ever know the answer but I can sum it up with a few guesses:  Hubris, Sociopathy or just plain stupidity.

The Huffington Post

Video

Tea party firebrand Rep. Allen West conceded his re-election fight Tuesday, two weeks after the election gave way to court appearances, two partial recounts and unending accusations by his camp that the vote count wasn’t fair.

In a statement, the Republican freshman said “there are certainly still inaccuracies in the results” but not enough to change the outcome, giving the race to Democratic newcomer Patrick Murphy.

“While a contest of the election results might have changed the vote totals, we do not have evidence that the outcome would change,” West said.

Murphy campaign manager Anthony Kusich said he was not aware of any concession call to his candidate, simply an e-mail that was publicly distributed. In his own statement, Murphy said he was “humbled by Congressman West’s gracious concession” and eager to get to work on behalf of all voters.

“To those who supported my opponent, my door is open and I want to hear your voice,” Murphy said. “I campaigned on a message of reaching across the aisle to get things done for the people of the Treasure Coast and Palm Beaches, and that is as important in this district as it is in Washington.”

Murphy declared victory in the wee hours of Election Night and has held his lead ever since, even as thousands of absentee, provisional and overseas ballots were processed and two partial recounts undertaken. But West’s campaign kept up a stream of skepticism about the results, largely focused on St. Lucie County, where elections officials acknowledged missteps.

An initial recount of some early ballots in St. Lucie gave West a slight bump. His campaign fought for a fuller recount, and received it, but it only improved Murphy’s margin of victory. He won by more than 2,000 votes.

Many have speculated West could find a new career in the place where he has been frequently seen, on cable television, but he has not said what his next step will be. “Only God knows what is in store for each of us,” he said in his statement, adding that “I will continue to fight for our republic.”

Whatever the next step, the contest between Murphy and West will go down as one of the most expensive in congressional history. Murphy eked out the win though he was out-fundraised more than four-to-one.

West, 51, is a favorite among the most conservative reaches of the Republican Party. He has made a string of headline-grabbing statements, from calling a majority of congressional Democrats communists to saying President Barack Obama, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and others should “get the hell out of the United States.”

Murphy, 29, portrayed West as an extremist who had done little else in Washington than stoke partisan fires.

In his concession statement, West offered congratulations to Murphy, saying “I pray he will serve his constituents with honor and integrity, and put the interests of our nation before his own.”

 

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November 19, 2012 · 1:14 AM

Allen West falls further behind

Allen West truly deserves everything that has come his way since November 6, 2012…

West’s desperate attempts to retain his seat in Congress gets more hilarious by the day.  It’s such a feel-good story to write about, knowing that this narcissistic former congressman will not keep his seat after all, no matter how many recounts he asks for.

Politico

Florida Rep. Allen West’s reelection prospects grew dimmer Sunday, as a recount of early ballots showed him falling further behind his Democratic opponent.

Democrat Patrick Murphy, a 29-year-old construction company executive, gained 242 votes after the St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections completed its re-tabulation, increasing his lead to more than 2,100 votes over West, a tea party hero. Murphy’s lead is just outside the 0.5 percent margin that would trigger an automatic district-wide recount under Florida law.

West won a legal battle Friday when the office’s canvassing board decided to re-tally all early votes that had been cast. The Republican had argued that those votes had been accidentally double-counted on election night and provided a winning margin to Murphy.

But with Murphy’s margin growing after the recount, West’s legal options appeared to narrow. With St. Lucie County having a noon deadline Sunday for certifying its election results, Murphy’s campaign argued that the election was effectively over. Florida has a Tuesday deadline for certifying the results from all three counties that make up the 18th Congressional District.

“By state law, he is effectively the winner,” Eric Johnson, a senior Murphy advisor, said in an interview.

Tim Edson, West’s campaign manager, said the advisers would be spending the coming hours assessing the vote totals. He did not specify whether the congressman had any plans to concede. Advisers said it was unlikely any decision would come Sunday.

“We’re going to take a look at where things stand,” Edson said. “If we believe the results are fair and accurate, we’re going to decide how to move forward. That decision has not been made.”

The fresh results marked the latest chapter in an increasingly chaotic and drawn-out election, which has extended nearly two weeks past the Nov. 6 election.

Gertrude Walker, the St. Lucie elections supervisor, has acknowledged errors in counting ballots, saying there was an initial error in feeding memory cards from voting machines through the vote-counting system. At a press conference last week, Walker said her office had acted in “haste” to make public results on Nov. 6 and that “mistakes were made.” On Friday, at a canvassing board hearing, the office announced that it had found 304 early-cast ballots in a box that had previously been uncounted.

Read more here… 

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November 16, 2012 · 7:02 AM

Allen West Rejects Offer To Restart Political Career In Georgia: ‘I’m Not An NFL Free Agent’

Allen West Georgia

What an arrogant piece of work.  I, for one am glad he didn’t take the offer.  We have enough arrogant politicians in Georgia and we surely don’t need this one.

The Huffington Post

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) on Wednesday turned down an offer from Georgia’s Republican Party chairwoman, Sue Everhart, who earlier this week urged the congressman to run for office in her state at some point in the future, in the face of his apparent electoral loss.

“No,” West told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution when asked if he’d consider Everhart’s offer. “Look, let me tell you something. I have moved my wife around for 20-some-odd years, being in the military, and she was also the daughter of a career military guy. When I retired, she chose Florida. That’s where my daughter’s in school, in college, my youngest daughter’s in high school. That’s our home. It’s a very nice thing, but I’m not an NFL free agent.”

West is currently still clinging to the hope that his loss to Democrat Patrick Murphy earlier this month is not concrete, despite the fact that Florida officials have certified the result.

While he and other top Republicans continue to explore possibilities for recounting votes, in hopes of somehow producing a victory, Everhart suggested on Monday thatWest should move back to his home state of Georgia if the final outcome doesn’t go his way.

“I would be glad to have him come back to Georgia and at some point run here,” Everhart told the Journal-Constitution. “I would certainly try to help him because he has done his job. The way he ran his race didn’t in any way interfere with the job he did. He ran as a Republican, a conservative Republican.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Florida GOP Chairman Lenny Curry have both called for a full recount of the West-Murphy contest. Murphy is meanwhile attending freshman orientation events on Capitol Hill, a move that West’s campaign has criticized as “premature.”

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November 10, 2012 · 2:05 PM

All Ballots Counted, Allen West Solidly Defeated By Patrick Murphy

This sore loser would rather look like a horse’s behind than accept defeat.  This tells us a lot about his true character…

The Huffington Post

Video

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) may be vowing that his race against Patrick Murphy is far from over, but as of early Saturday morning, all ballots were counted and legally the result is clear: West lost.

Murphy won a total of 166,799 votes to West’s 164,370, the Palm Beach Postreported. That puts Murphy ahead by 2,429 votes and gives him a 0.7 percent advantage. Florida law only requires a recount when the margin is 0.5 percent or less.

Palm Beach County officials were up until 4:45 a.m. Saturday counting all remaining ballots cast during early voting, on Election Day, absentee ballots and other problematic ballots, the Palm Beach Post reported.

The race in Florida’s 18th Congressional District still hasn’t been officially called. Palm Beach officials must submit their results to state officials for them to become official, but Saturday’s final vote tally all but ensures the race is over.

Murphy already declared victory on election night and NBC called the race for him that night, but West still hasn’t conceded. In addition to declaring on his Facebook page that the race is “far from decided,” West filed lawsuits to have ballots and voting machines impounded in Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties. The judge in Palm Beachthrew the case out on Friday, though, telling West’s lawyers that their arguments fell “woefully short” of what was required for an injunction. A St. Lucie judge is slated to hear West’s case on Tuesday.

A West campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Murphy’s campaign is ready to move on.

“As expected, the election night results have been confirmed, and it is time to put the campaign behind us,” Murphy campaign spokesman Anthony Kusich said in a statement. “Patrick looks forward to representing the treasure coast and palm beaches in Washington and working with both parties to get Florida back to work.”

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November 7, 2012 · 8:10 AM

Allen West Loses His House Seat

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) delivers the keynote address at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. on February 12, 2011.

Former Rep. Allen West (R-FL)

This is the icing on the cake.  Alllen West was an arrogant Tea Party backed Congressman from Florida who attacked President Obama and his supporters on a daily basis with vitriol even the staunchest Republican may have been shocked to hear.  Good riddance.

TPMDC

Republican Rep. Allen West (FL), the bomb-throwing tea party darling elected during the 2010 tea party wave, was projected as defeated in a close race by Democrat Patrick Murphy.

NBC News projected the race for Murphy. With 99 percent of the vote in, he was up by some 1,500 votes.

The Floridian freshman quickly gained a national profile with his scorched-earth rhetoric against President Obama and his initiatives. He rankled many earlier this year when he claimed that dozens of congressional Democrats were closet communists — comments he repeatedly stood by.

West was a prime target for Democrats this cycle. He opted to run for a different House seat this cycle after his district was redrawn to include a larger fraction of Democrats. Despite his best efforts to soften his image, he was an imperfect fit for the evenly divided district.

And Democrats were gleeful about Murphy’s victory.

“We congratulate Congressman-elect Patrick Murphy on defeating Tea Party crony Allen West,” said Florida Democratic Party chair Rod Smith. “Murphy is a rising star in the party and will be a strong voice for the people of Florida in the United States Congress. Tonight, the people of this district rejected divisive, hateful rhetoric in favor a fresh-faced, bipartisan approach centered around the issues important to Florida’s middle class families.”

The race was hard-fought, with brutal attack ads from both candidates bankrolled in part by outside groups, who made their mark on the race.

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October 18, 2012 · 12:21 AM

Allen West plagued by scam PACs

A Matt Wuerker cartoon is shown. | Matt Wuerker

Oh well, sounds like karma to me…

Politico

It’s the inevitable, if unsightly, convergence of the Internet, tea party, the post-Citizens United campaign-finance era and the presence of a Democrat in the White House who is despised by many conservatives. Political operatives can create a PAC and corresponding website on the cheap, drop some cash to rent an email list and, voilà— in come the small-dollar contributions from grass-roots Republicans eager to support any effort aiming to turn out President Barack Obama or reelect the fiery West.

Except those chunks of $25 and $50 don’t often find their way to any serious campaigns to beat Obama or boost West.

“The vast majority of the groups that we know are engaged in this have done nothing for West,” said Jill Holtzman Vogel, the congressman’s campaign attorney.

And, with the outfits that have given to West, those contributions pale in comparison to the money they’ve raised using the freshman Republican’s name.

According to media trackers and West campaign officials, none of the many conservative super PACs purportedly raising money for the congressman is airing TV ads on his behalf.

The Florida Republican’s campaign has sent cease-and-desist letters to a number of the groups and filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission, copies of which the campaign shared with POLITICO. But the organizations have been only mildly deterred and some continue to raise funds for themselves with marketing that would suggest they represent the actual campaign.

One organization, CAPE PAC, has a Google ad headlined, “Allen West in 2012: Join our Campaign & Help Us.” The URL goes even further: It is “www.allenwest2012.co.”

Yes, that’s “.co,” not “.com.”

A click on the link takes the reader to CAPE PAC’s main home page, something that a spokesman for the group said was a concession to the West campaign’s demands. Previously, the link directed readers to a CAPE PAC Web page meant to look like West’s actual campaign site.

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October 3, 2012 · 9:08 AM

Democrat Targets West’s Military Career In Brutal TV Ad

Democrat Targets West’s Military Career In Brutal TV Ad

Any scrutiny toward Allen West is welcomed in my book…

TPM 2012

Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy struck back on Tuesday at Rep. Allen West (R-FL), after West ran an ad about Murphy’s arrest in 2003 bar-fight. In response, Murphy went after a key event for West in 2003 — when his military career was ended.

In a race that has possibly featured the most intensely negative ads of the cycle, this one is a doozy.

“You need the facts about Allen West in 2003,” the announcer says, in response to how West’s ad touted his own military service in that year. “West was criminally charged with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice; found guilty of three counts of aggravated assault; and relieved of his command. The final Army report: West ‘performed illegal acts…merited court martial…faced 11 years in prison.’ Allen West: He just isn’t who he says he is.”

The Murphy campaign confirmed to TPM it is spending about $175,000 to air the ad, starting on Tuesday.

West fired a handgun next to the head of an Iraqi policeman during an interrogation, and after first having the officer beaten. West said this was done in order to stop an impending attack on his unit, but no evidence of such a plan was found based on the policeman’s coerced confession.

The incident did, however, help West gain notoriety with conservative activists, and to launch a political career that ultimately saw him elected to Congress in the 2010 Republican landslide.

The West campaign was clearly angry about the new ad, responding in a statement to reporters.

“What kind of man who has never worn the uniform attacks an honorably discharged combat veteran for acting to protect the lives of his soldiers?” said West campaign manager Tim Edson. “A desperate man and apparently the same kind of man who calls a decorated combat veteran a coward, hides behind his father’s racist attack ads, gets into drunken bar fights, verbally assaults police officers and then uses his family’s connections to get out of trouble. Patrick Murphy is a spoiled brat and a truly terrible person.”

 

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July 3, 2012 · 12:02 AM

Blog Round Up – Tuesday 7-3-2012

Anderson Cooper: “The Fact Is, I’m Gay.”

If it’s not repealed, Obamacare may just disappear

Across eastern US, with no power, people struggle

Romney Trying Not to Flip-Flop on Immigration

Most Want Obamacare Opponents to Move On

Obama’s White Voters Problem And The Civil Rights Act Of 1964

Mitch McConnell: Covering 30 million uninsured is `not the issue’

About that great blow GOP governors are striking for states’ rights…

Incessantly stupid Rep. Allen West says Obama wants you to ‘be his slave

Dobbs Helps Cover Up Romney’s Support For Health Insurance Mandatate

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May 5, 2012 · 12:08 AM

Seeking Attention from ANYBODY, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) accuses Obama of ‘destroying the black community’

Allen West via screenshot

I’m fully aware of GOP political games now.  Basically when the little “nobodies” in the party, like Allen West, Virginia Foxx,  even Newt Gingrich, et al want attention or publicity, they make the silliest and most ignorant statements solely for the publicity it garners.

Now, having said that, here is Allen West’s latest meme:

The Raw Story

Florida Republican congressman Rep. Allen West has torn a page from Sarah Palin’s book and issued a proclamation to the world via his Facebook page.

West cited the 13 percent unemployment rate among black Americans and wrote, “The failed economic policies of President Obama are destroying the black community and lessening the chances for economic freedom while promoting economic dependence.”

Referencing the fact that he was recently un-invited by the NAACP to speak at an event, West said, “Perhaps this is what the NAACP was afraid to hear me address.”

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NNACP) was actually quite clear about its reasons for rescinding an invitation to West to speak at the Martin County, Florida NAACP’s Tuesday Freedom Banquet earlier this week.

Martin County NAACP President Jerry Gore told Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers, “There’s a certain statement he made about Communists.”

Gore was referring to a recent assertion by West that there are currently “about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party.  It’s called the Progressive Caucus.”

West has taken a novel approach to addressing critics of  the remark, saying to conservative blog The Daily Caller that a “stupid” reporter took his remarks out of context but then days later assuring CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien that he meant the statement exactly as he made it.  However, when the congressman was pressed by O’Brien to name specific members of the progressive bloc who are Communists, West declined.

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