“The mission of the United States military is not to accommodate behavior, and definitely not to accommodate sexual behavior. But right now, what is most important for us to be talking about?
“In this past week, we had the Taliban infiltrate a gentlemen into the Afghan security forces who shot six American soldiers. Killed them. What we should be talking about are rules of engagement and the strategic objectives that will lead to our victory and our success against this enemy.
“Instead, we are worrying about who is sleeping with who in the military. That’s crazy. So I think right now don’t ask, don’t tell is not the thing the American people expect the House and the Senate and the senior military leadership to be talking about. What they want to know is how do we protect our sons and daughters on the battlefield, how do we make sure that we are promoting victory, and how do we make sure that we take this fight to the enemy and not allow them to bring the fight to us.”
Category: Allen West
Outrageous: MSNBC Broadcast Causes Left-Wing Woman to Make Fake School-Shooting Threat Blamed on Tea Party
On Nov. 9, South Florida talk-radio host Joyce Kaufman was named as chief of staff for newly-elected Republican congressman Allen West. That night, Rachel Maddow aired a video of Kaufman giving a fiery speech at a Tea Party. A shooting threat Nov. 10 led to the shutdown of Broward schools, and Kaufman’s resignation was announced Nov. 11.
Two weeks later, the truth emerged: The shooting threat came from Ellisa Martinez, a left-wing Green Party activist:
The FBI says that after Martinez saw a tape on MSNBC of Kaufman at a July 3 Tea Party rally, she fired off a threatening email that led to a lockdown at all Broward County schools.
(Hat-tip: Weasel Zippers.) Martinez was arrested Tuesday after fleeing to California. She was arraigned Wednesday in Los Angeles and will be extradited back to Florida. All along, West’s supporters suspected this was a hoax. MSM headline you’ll never see:
MSNBC Inspires Left-Wing Hate Hoax
Why does this remind me of “Send the Body to Glenn Beck“?
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! My guess is that Professor Reynolds linked me because he knows how depressed I am about . . . I don’t want to say it. Anyway, I blame Nick Saban.
Also thanks to the Rhetorican for the link. Meanwhile, if you think you can handle it, Jennifer Aniston in a bikini.
Civil War or Uncivil Peace
My colleague deploys to defend our freedom recalling the stoic song of Scottish courage:
War or peace, it’s all the same to me.
I’ll be killed in the war or hung during peace.
Or, as that same dauntless spirit was once expressed on a famous battlefield: “Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer!”
It happened that, earlier today, I received a tersely mystifying e-mail from another warrior, my friend Allen West:
It is with deep regret that this Congressional office and the people of CD 22 will not have Joyce Kaufman as my Chief of Staff. Joyce is a good friend, and will remain loyal to South Floridians and to me. I will always seek Joyce’s counsel for being a good Representative of this Congressional District.
What was this about? Who is Joyce Kaufman? Why was this staffing decision being announced via an e-mail from the West campaign office? A bit of research revealed that her hiring had been announced Tuesday:
A proud Puerto Rican Jew, Kaufman became a de facto spokeswoman for South Florida’s anti-illegal immigration movement in 2007. . . .
“Her 20 years of experience on the political scene in South Florida (always as a radio host) will give me helpful insights and perspective,” Tea Party fave West told Page2Live Monday night. “As chief of staff, she’ll be my right-hand person. “
A screaming liberal Democrat turned independent, Kaufman also gave West plenty airtime as he ran against Democrat Ron Klein in 2008 and this year. West is believed to have been on Kaufman’s show more than 100 times.
That was Tuesday. On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow did a hit job on Kaufman:
A media dogpile ensued and today Kaufman announced she would resign as chief of staff rather than be used as a weapon against West. But watch that video and ask yourself, what’s wrong with what Joyce Kaufman said?
“I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendment rights was they gave me a Second Amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will. . . . [S]ome things are worth fighting for, and some things are worth dying for.”
Does anyone disagree? Or is there nothing worth fighting and dying for?
And isn’t it true that the Founding Fathers specifically intended the Second Amendment as the ultimate guarantor of our liberty?
A friend of mind down home is a ranking police officer. He once told me that Americans have three means of redressing our grievances: The soap box, the ballot box and the cartridge box. So long as we have the first two — free speech and free elections — there is no need to resort to the third.
In point of fact, the stupendous success of Allen West and other Republicans at the ballot box has averted the scenario in which Joyce Kaufman felt she would be justified in going into the wilderness to form an armed resistance. Continue reading Civil War or Uncivil Peace →
Obligatory: ‘Hey, Did Anybody Notice That Allen West and Tim Scott Are Black?’
“So I think that the — the liberal progressives saw the strength of the grass-roots movement that we call the Tea Party which stands for ‘taxed enough already’ and they tried to turn against it,” Rep.-elect Allen West (R-Fla.) said Friday on “Hannity” on Fox News.
“And the number one thing that you always try to do to silence an opponent in the United States of America is to call someone a racist.”
West said that attempts to tarnish the Tea Party did not foil his campaign. “And we see that that did not work whatsoever,” he said.
Ann Coulter: “MSNBC is still searching for the ‘Republicans are racist’ angle in all of this.” And speaking of MSNBC, I like Allahpundit’s take on Keith Olbermann’s suspension:
If you’re going to rant against the other team every night, own it. Please, no more Murrow-esque professions of avoiding the voting booth in the name of objectivity when you’re on the air five hours a week screeching about wingnut fascists and the racist dystopia they’re about to impose on America.
Someone needs to compile a highlight reel of Olbermann’s most hyperbolic pronouncements about the Impending Dark Night of Fascism. He’s done that Martin Niemoller lecture so often — we’re always just one election away from cattle cars and concentration camps — that even liberals must be tiring of it by now.
UPDATE: Susannah Fleetwood has this video of an earlier “Fox and Friends” interview with Tim Scott:
This year, a record total of 13 black candidates won Republican congressional primaries, two of whom won their elections Nov. 2. Another candidate we covered extensively here, Charles Lollar, got just 35 percent against Steny Hoyer in Maryland’s 5th District, but fared well in Calvert and St. Mary’s counties.
We should remember that Allen West didn’t win his first campaign against Ron Klein in 2008, and we should also keep in mind that district lines will be re-drawn before the 2012 election. Black GOP candidates who didn’t win this year ought to be encouraged to try again, using the fundraising and other resources they developed in 2010 as the basis for building stronger campaigns for 2012.
VIDEO: Allen West Victory Speech
BOCA RATON, Fla. — Will be uploading these segments in stages, in no particular order. It was freaking awesome, is what it was.
UPDATE: My plan for Election Night had been to end up at Marco Rubio’s victory bash down in Coral Gables. But I was a little late leaving Panama City in the morning and, though I drove like a bat out of hell, it was obvious I would be late getting there. So I called the West campaign, found out they were having their victory party here about 45 miles up the coast from Miami and . . .
Well, Colonel West has been a sentimental favorite for a long time, ever since he was Pamela Geller’s “Colonel from Kandahar” columnist inAfghanistan. I interviewed him during his 2008 campaign, back when the NRCC wouldn’t give him the time of day, so it’s like destiny that brought me here.
The congressman-elect meets the press after his victory.
Mrs. West and the couple’s lovely daughters.
Smile and say, “Charles Johnson!”
Just Requested Media Credentials for the Marco Rubio Victory Party in Miami
PANAMA CITY, Fla. — Me and every other freaking reporter on the planet:
Perhaps the most sought-after press credential in the country on Nov. 2: Republican Senate frontrunner Marco Rubio’s party at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.
As of yesterday, the campaign had received requests from 232 media outlets. That includes 35 television cameras (of which 17 are from Florida) , network crews from NBC, ABC, FOX, CNN, the BBC, NPR, Univision and Al Arabiya, and 75 members of the foreign press — radio reporters from the Czech Republic, West Africa, China; TV crews from The Congo, Columbia, Japan, France, Spain; and print reporters from Germany, New Zealand, Argentina and the UK.
To say Rubio has come a long way is a massive understatement. . . .
Indeed. In the first poll taken after “those treacherous bastards” at the NRSC endorsed Charlie Crist in May 2009, Marco Rubio trailed by more than 30 points.
Professor William Jacobson gives credit to the “Not One Red Cent” rebellion against the GOP Establishment. I’ve told the story behind that rebellion at Hot Air Green Room:
We were standing outside the Continental Lounge in Rosslyn, Va., while the young Republican operative explained it to me.
“All they care about is getting their chairmanships back, and they don’t care how they get there,” said the operative. “They don’t want to spend any money, so they were looking for a self-funder.”
“They” are Republican senators, and what my friend was explaining was the otherwise inexplicable decision of the National Republican Senatorial Committee to endorse Charlie Crist in the Florida Senate race — 15 months before the primary!
As soon as this news hit the Internet on Tuesday, the outright stupidity of the NRSC and its chairman, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, became the No. 1 topic of conversation among conservative activists, including the journalists, bloggers and GOP operatives who gathered for Thursday night’s cocktail party at the Continental in Rosslyn, just across the Potomac River from Georgetown.
The uprising of conservatives for Rubio has been one of the most inspiring political stories of recent years. Here in my cheap hotel, I just saw a TV ad in which Charlie Crist denounces Marco as “extreme.” Charlie doesn’t get it. He’s toast.
Anyway, I just interviewed a staffer for Steve Southerland, the GOP candidate here in Florida’s 2nd District. They’re feeling pretty confident they’ll defeat Allen Boyd tomorrow. But I just saw a DCCC TV ad distorting Southerland’s support for the Fair Tax, so “don’t get cocky.”)
It’s 592 miles to Miami. I want to stop by and see Allen West on the way. Please hit the tip jar.
He’s Allen West
And he approved this message:
Latest Polls Show Republicans Now Leading Key House Races in MD-1, FL-22
In Maryland’s 1st District, Republican Andy Harris leads freshman Democrat Rep. Frank Kratovil by 11 points, according to a new poll by Monmouth University, even though the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has spent more than $1 million to help Kratovil.
Meanwhile, in Florida’s 22nd District, Republican Allen West appears to have gained the upper hand against second-term incumbent Democrat Rep. Ron Klein. West leads 47-44 among likely voters, and “West’s 3-point lead grows to 5 points among respondents who say their chances of voting are ‘excellent’ (49-44).”
Here’s a look at some of the TV ads running in these districts. First, an Allen West ad addressing economic issues:
Next, a Ron Klein ad depicting West as an extremist:
Reckless from Ron Klein for Congress on Vimeo.
Next, from Maryland, an ad highlighting Andy Harris’ military service:
And a DCCC ad depicting Harris as a tool of Big Business lobbyists:
These kinds of ads are now running in saturation intensity in every key House district — as many as 100 out of 435 are currently considered “competitive” — as candidates, party campaign committees and outside groups seek to shape voters’ perceptions. It currently appears that Republicans are winning despite the blizzard of Democrat attack ads. A new survey by Pew reports “Republicans hold a 12-point edge among likely voters in the most competitive districts in the nation,” but Moe Lane thinks there is something devilish about that poll.