Florida GOP will probably redistrict Allen West into a far more difficult CD.
I really don’t have much of a problem with West. Actually, I should walk that back and say it in a different way — The problems I have with him aren’t necessarily because of race. I would have disagreed with the disagreeable things he has said just as much if he were white. For instance, he said that Harry Reid had no right to say “Negro dialect,” he poodled along with Boehner in the phony baloney debt ceiling deal, and then there’s his philo-Semitic pandering. Believe me, a lot of white Republican Congressmen have engaged in the same idiocy.
No, my big problem with Allen West isn’t Allen West, it’s the white lamestream conservative panderers (won’t mention Dana Loesch, Rush Limbaugh and Bill Cunningham by name) that make him out to be some sort of demigod simply because he’s black and an exciting orator.
What’s really going on in Florida is that the Republicans in the state legislature are going to box up enough blacks and Hispanics as possible in their own little near-uniracial playgrounds, “to comply with VRA ’65,” i.e. to create as many lily white gentile districts as possible, to minimize the effect that 2006 and 2008 style blue waves have on the Florida Congressional delegation. In doing so, the music stopped before West could find a chair. I don’t think the “Romney machine” or the “Republican establishment” has a particular vendetta against him, in fact, I think it’s just the opposite, they love the black face. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
However, let’s be real and grown up here. The new Florida map will probably mean one fewer Allen West and three more boring white forty-someting accountants with male pattern baldness being in Congress who will vote almost exactly the same way West has and would have voted. Votes in Congress are the name of the game, not external pigmentation or soaring oratory. Lose one to gain three? Sounds like a plan to me.
UPDATE 1/31
Countenance Blog 
I see your point about votes.
However, to the extent that the House represents the Class A farm team, and West is a promising player (of course, this begs the question of whether he truly is, but it sounds as if you have no big problems with him), is it a good idea to get rid of a potential 300 hitter for a 200 hitter or two (or three)? On the other hand, getting redistricted out of the House might be the shove he needs to move up to AA ball in the Senate, or AAA ball as governor.
Non sequitur, because the House is far more important to be the Federal legislative body to start budgets and spending and vote on all legislation more than anything else. Voting records are what matter to me, so someone boring who votes the same way as Allen West isn’t the same as a .200 hitter to his .300 average.
You might not have read any other posts in this blog, so what I’m about to say might shock you. A white country should not have a black President. I wouldn’t trust even Allen West not to engage in the same “my people” hysterics of an Eric Holder. People are talking him up for House Armed Services Committee Chairman if he stays in the House for a long time and the GOP holds the majority, but I don’t even trust him there, because he would use his influence to force the military to engage in the same kind of AA which we all know helped him rise all the way up to Light Colonel in the Army.
I’ve followed your blog for a while. Not because I’m a masochist — I follow it because I agree with you most of the time. But not all of the time.
With regard to what you call my “non sequitur.” Are you happy with the current crop of GOP presidential aspirants? A RINO without discernible principles in the lead, a sometimes conservative loose cannon running second, and with the real conservatives among the also rans? Me neither. That’s why Republicans need to foster the careers of promising individuals in lesser elective positions. I understand your point about simply needing numbers of votes in the house, but since there is only one president, promising conservative Republican candidates need to be groomed, not smothered in the crib.
We can argue about whether or not West is such an individual who should be groomed — although you yourself said “I really don’t have much of a problem with West” — but it is not simply a matter of arithmetic to decide that throwing a charismatic conservative congressman with the potential to become a great president under the bus simply to pick up two plain vanilla congressional districts represents a good decision.
After black “Republicans” Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice admitted they voted for Obama, I do share your skepticism about where black conservative or Republican politicians’ loyalties will lie when push comes to shove.
If you read me every day and you don’t always agree, you have to be at least a little bit of a masochist!
I’m voting Ron Paul. Not because he can actually win. Ron Paul knows that the nominee won’t be named Ron Paul. But I want him to accumulate enough delegates as possible to get policy concessions. My dream scenario is that the top delegate finisher is just short of 1144, and RP has a few hundred in the bag.
I think we obsess too much over the Presidency qua Presidency. If you expect to be President, and expect for your campaign to be taken seriously, you better have a lot of money yourself or raise a lot of money. That paradigm is not conducive to right-wing populism and nationalism. Yeah, I pay attention to the horse race, and I blog about it a lot, as you can see, but for me, it’s pretty much “for entertainment purposes only.” My serious money, blood, sweat and tears this season will be geared to sending my Congressman (Todd Akin, MO-2) to the Senate (replacing Claire McCaskill) and also to campaigning for a good replacement for him in MO-2.