Zen Bassoon commented in Lefty Coaster's diary Allen West tells Obama Reid Pelosi to "get the hell out of the United States of America."
They're redistricting him [Allen West] out.
As the other comments in the diary detail well, West is quite repulsive and we'd be better off without him polluting public discourse. The redistricting comment compelled me to understand the reference. Turns out, Mitt Romney and the GOP establishment are attacking the Tea Party in Florida and Allen West will be a major victim of their efforts. This is a siginificant event and clear sign of the battle for the GOP; you could call this the Empire striking back.
FL GOP Rep Will Weatherford was a surrogate in the spin room for Romney following the 1/26 GOP debate. Weatherford is also the FL House redistricting chair. That position allows him great influence over redistricting maps, which FL's redistricting commission recently completed. The GOP establishment, through Weatherford,has doomed Allen West through the redrawing of his legislative district (warning: wingnut site at link):
West’s congressional district inexplicably sheds the most out support as compared to all other incumbent Republican and Democrat Congressman. A few weeks back we quoted an unnamed legislator saying that, “Allen West was screwed”, a statement which was originally made about made five months before the purposed maps were made public, leading insiders to believe that the fix was in against Allen West. But in light of Weatherford’s comment, it is increasingly clear that this is a fait accompli.
According to Weatherford, those preliminary maps will not change- at the most, any additional changes would be minimal, and those changes would not make any appreciable difference from the preliminary maps. In addition, Weatherford stated that a deal was struck between him, Senate President Mike Haridopolos, and Senator Don Gaetz to finalize these maps and push them through as soon as possible.
My first thought is this couldn't happen to a better person. Then I'm impressed with the willingness of a Romney ally to engage in the long game, committing the political equivalent of a hatchet job. The GOP establishment is flexing its muscles and putting down the Tea Party revolutionaries endangering their hold on the political process. A process they feel they paid for and own and their investment is being threatend. The extremists have pulled the rhetoric so far to the extreme that Newt f-ing Gingrich becomes again an acceptable player on the national stage. This won't do!
The depth of their intent is belied by the statistic cited above that "sheds the most out support as compared to all other Republican and Democrat [sic] Congressman. " They treated him worst than incumbent Democrats! And Weatherford is completely ignoring calls from Florida Republicans to alter the proposed maps in any way. Clearly the intent is to remove West from the stage.