I guess my first question is why Washington State’s Snohomish County Republicans asked former congressman Allen West to be the feature attraction at their annual Lincoln Day dinner. I mean, I get the whole Lincoln Day=find a black guy thing, and I know that the bench is pretty empty once you get past Clarence Thomas, but Allen West is not only insane, he’s intemperate and nasty.
Of course, West made some news by ruminating on the enthusiasm with which Seattle Seahawks fans root on their team. Why root for your local football team but not root for America (fuck yeah)?
For that matter, why root for the University of Washington’s sport teams if you’re basically more interested in perpetuating failure and dependency than success, amirite?
This is the kind of deep and delusional thinking that gets you invited to address Snohomish Republicans on Lincoln Day.
“Why is it that here in Seattle you have the loudest, I mean the loudest, fans in the National Football League?” West asked.
“You want to win, right? Why is it that you’re one of the most liberal cities in the United States? This is the juxtaposition. Why is it that you go to a game and you cheer for your own team to win, but yet you don’t cheer for your own city, you don’t cheer for your own country, to win?”
…“Why is it that you want to relegate (sic) the individuals on the football field to success, to score a touchdown, but yet you would rather have people in your city, in your state, in your country sit on the sidelines and wait for somebody to go out and score a touchdown for them?” West asked.
“How dare you scream and cheer here on a Saturday or a Sunday at the UW stadium or there in CenturyLink stadium and then when it comes to Monday through Friday, you’re not cheering? You’re seeking every single way that you don’t create victors, you’re creating victims. That’s the incredible perplexion (sic) that we see.”
“That’s the incredible perplexion (sic) that we see. Every single inner city where you have an NFL team people are going out and cheering for success, but when they go on Monday they’re not cheering for success.
“That’s what you should be talking about. See it comes down to this: Do we want to have a state of productivity or do we want to have a welfare state.”
The first reason this nonsense is stupid is, of course, that Seattle and Washington State are doing just fine and better than average on the employment front. But I don’t want to argue about West’s meritless speech. What I want to discuss is this:
As has been the case lately at Lincoln Day dinners, a viable prospective Republican candidate for Governor — Seattle Port Commissioner Bill Bryant — played second fiddle at Friday night’s dinner.
He did, too, in Yakima earlier this month, with radio talker David Boze the keynote speaker.
There is the problem.
That’s it.
The Republican base wants to listen to lunatics, so that’s who gets to keynote their county dinners. The Port Commissioner cools his heels while the entertainment talks.
This is the key to understanding the larger picture of what’s gone wrong with the Party of Lincoln. They’d rather celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s legacy by flying a token black guy 3,000 miles so he can insult their city and state than listen to the ideas of the person who might make a serious run at the governorship.