The blow-up between south Florida Reps. Allen West (R) and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D) isn’t particularly interesting. Wasserman-Schultz, who also serves as head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), expressed surprise and amazement on the House floor that West would support handing Medicare recipients a bill for $6,000 when he serves a district so rich in Medicare recipients. When West found out that he’d been criticized on the House Floor (not by name, mind you), he lost his temper and sent a letter to Wasserman-Schultz (and copied to Pelosi and Cantor) in which he called her a bunch of nasty names.
Anyone who has paid any attention to Rep. Allen West knows that his political support arises almost solely from an incident in Iraq where he fired a gun near the head of a detainee resulting in the loss of his command, a reprimand, and a fine. He’s popular because he treated an Arab roughly and paid a price for it. His rhetoric is consistently ridiculous, and it’s not at all clear that he has a firm hold on reality. It’s no surprise that he lost his marbles after some rather mild criticism from a fellow lawmaker.
What’s lost in all this focus on West’s behavior is that Wasserman-Shultz had a good point. It used to be that you could count on a south Florida politician to do two things: protect entitlements and support the embargo of Cuba. Now we have a Tea Party Republican who doesn’t have the slightest sense of self-preservation. This is one more example of the larger problem with the Tea Party’s influence in Washington. If they don’t care about themselves, how can we expect them to care about the economy or our interest rates or the pain they’ll be causing to others?
