Even Allen West Doesn't Deserve This: Over-The-Top Ad Shows GOP Rep Punching Woman
U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., on Friday pushed back against an attack ad featuring a caricature of the Tea Party favorite punching a senior citizen and woman in the face, alleging during an interview on "Fox and Friends" that African American leaders have not spoken out against the advertisement because of their own partisan bias.
"Where is the outrage from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and the NAACP about this?" West said Friday during an appearance on Fox and Friends. "They're not going to say anything because they're nothing but an effective wing of the Democrat Party and they have effectively kept them well laced so they can continue to make sure that they have a black electorate voting bloc."
The ad, titled "Fighter," was funded by a group called the American Sunrise PAC, which Federal Election Commission records indicate is largely funded by the father of Florida Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy, who is challenging West to represent the Sunshine State's 18th congressional district. The 30-second ad shows a video illustration of West, who is black, punching an elderly white man in the face and stealing money from a middle-class black family, while a voiceover explains how West's policies would hurt women, seniors and middle class Americans.
"West has socked it to seniors, voting to end Medicare as we know it," the narrator says, as the West caricature, wearing boxing gloves, punches an elderly man in the face. "He's whacked women, with his votes for huge cuts in women's health care funding."
On Thursday, West sent an email to supporters where he called the ad "reprehensible" and insisted it does not represent his own policy stances.
"It plays on stereotypes and fear to divide Americans, and it cheapens the very real and tragic occurrences of violence against women and seniors."
The thing is, the advertisement does give an accurate account of West's political positions, but those facts were denigrated by the over-the-top image of the former U.S. army colonel beating white women and senior citizens. After all, West is the congressman who believes Medicare will destroy America, recently defined Social Security a "slavery" and called female colleague U.S, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., "the most vile, unprofessional and despicable member of the U.S. House of Representatives" after she criticized his support for legislation that would slash Medicaid funding.
West has had so many golden moments of crazy during his time in Congress that the American Sunrise PAC likely erred when it opted for cheap, easy blows. After all, West is the man who insisted 80 House Democrats are actually Communists, has consistently voted for cuts in women's health care, alleged the notorious Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbals would be "proud" of the Democratic Party, and reportedly offended the entire Congressional Black Congress by delivering a meal of Chick-fil-A chicken and biscuits to the group's weekly meeting -- and then walked out -- when it was his turn to provide lunch for the group.
"I wouldn't want to go into his mental state," U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., told The Huffington post this week, discussing the Chick-fil-A incident. "All I know is his verbiage and his rhetoric is way over-the-top. Way over-the-top."
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