Allen West
Florida Republican Rep. Allen West's strategy for reelection is
laid out in this Bloomberg story: personal attacks and raising as much money as humanly possible.
U.S. Representative Allen West calls his opponent a “spoiled brat.” That’s mild compared to what he says about his colleagues, calling one despicable and “not a lady” and 78 of them communists.
The 51-year-old retired Army lieutenant colonel, one of two black Republicans in the House, has raised more money than any candidate for the chamber except Speaker John Boehner. West is spending much of it on personal attacks on his opponent, 29- year-old Patrick Murphy, a first-time candidate who is responding in kind. [...]
[...] West holds few public events and hasn’t knocked on any doors, opting instead for broadsides against Murphy. [...]
This month, West’s only campaign events were the forum with Murphy in Fort Pierce and an appearance with talk-show host Mark Levin at a West Palm Beach retirement community, said Michele Hickford, West’s campaign spokesman. West introduced Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Oct. 7 at a rally in Port St. Lucie.
“I’ve been kind of busy, you know, in Washington D.C.,” West told reporters after the Fort Pierce event. “But I think that now we’re in that last 200-meter sprint of a nice, hard one-mile race, I’ll be out there.”
Think on that a moment. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is courting the same voters, at the same event, as the guy who has called his fellow members of Congress communists. And that's one of his more mild comments. There's your GOP in 2012.
West is counting on the fact that, apart from Boehner, he's the most prolific fundraiser among House Republicans. As of the June 30 reporting period, he had amassed $9.9 million to Murphy's $2.2 million. West's campaign says they've brought in another $4.4 million since July. All to use to raise even more money (they spent more than $4 million to do all that fundraising) to spend on more personal attacks on Murphy.
But West has no legislative record to run on, just a lot of extremist, headline-grabbing attacks on his fellow members of Congress. He remains a tea partiers' wet dream of a representative. Loud, obnoxious, always getting attention for his extremist statements, but not actually doing any kind of law-making, because after all, the last thing these people want is a functioning federal government. West, then, is their model member of Congress. And Romney is right there with him.
That makes defeating him more exciting, but even more important. Booting West is booting the incarnation of the tea party out the House.
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