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THIS Allen West...

West’s rhetoric has won him both support and condemnation from differing groups along the American political spectrum. Members of the conservative movement view him as a “torch bearer” and “conservative icon”, with Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent both recommending him for Vice President, and Glenn Beck supporting him for President. Several remarks by West have caused differing degrees of controversy. These include calling President Barack Obama “an abject failure”, ordering both pro-Palestinian demonstrators and the views of “chicken men” Democrats to “get the hell out” of the United States, opining that drivers with Obama bumper stickers are “a threat to the gene pool”, and pronouncing that black Democrats are trying to keep African Americans “on the plantation”, while casting himself as the “modern-day Harriet Tubman” ferrying them to rescue. In a critical summation of West’s stylistic bombast, the left-leaning Mother Jones magazine opined that “[for West] every sentence is a proxy war in the larger struggle between patriots and the ‘people in this world that just have to have their butts kicked.’”

In January 2011, West joined House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) in condemning the official flying of a Palestine Liberation Organization flag in Washington D.C.. West said that the raising of the flag is “an attempt to legitimize an organization with a known history of terrorist actions”.[38] In February, West described Michael Ledeen as one of his “foreign policy heroes”, and implored his followers to read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals to “understand what they’re up against.” Other authors West has cited in helping him shape his worldview include philosopher John Stuart Mill and Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman, known for the proclamation that “war is hell”.

Ideologically, West has cast his work overseas in historical terms, theorizing that America is following in the footsteps of Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours, or the 300 Spartan Hoplites at the Battle of Thermopylae, in defending Western civilization against Muslim threats from the Middle East. In speaking on what he believes to be Islam’s proclivity for violence, West remarked that “Something happened when Mohammed enacted the Hijra and he left Mecca and he went out to Medina, it became violence.” In lieu of this view, in February 2011, West cited the threat of “radical Islamic terrorists” as his motivation for voting to extend provisions of the Patriot Act; however, he voted against another extension in May 2011. When asked during an interview with The Shalom Show how he would work with others “like Keith Ellison, who supports Islam,” West stated that Ellison, a Minnesota Congressman and practicing Muslim, represents the “antithesis of the principles upon which this country was established.” West later argued that his initial comment was misconstrued. He said the comments were “not about his Islamic faith, but about his continued support of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).” In a Boynton Beach Town Hall meeting, West told the Miami leader of CAIR that “I will always defend your right to practice a free religion under the First Amendment, but what you must understand, if I am speaking the truth, I am not going to stop speaking the truth. The truth is not subjective.”

On July 19, 2011, West sent an email to Democratic Representative and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz in response to comments directed at him in a speech the Congresswoman made on the floor of the House of Representatives after West had departed the chamber. West’s email, which he copied to members of House Democratic and Republican leadership, characterized Wasserman as “the most vile, unprofessional, and despicable member of the US House of Representatives”, said that she was “not a lady” and asked that she focus, instead, on her own congressional district. This is a long-standing dispute that West says “dates back to the disgusting protest you ordered at my campaign headquarters, October 2010 in Deerfield Beach.”

At town hall meeting in Palm City, Florida on April 11, 2012, West was asked by a man in the audience, “What percentage of the American legislature do you think are card carrying Marxists or International Socialists?” West responded that he believed “there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party.” When asked to name them, he replied “It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.”

http://electionsmeter.com/detail/Allen-West-id6675