 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
August 4, 2011
4 Menachem-Av, 5771
Lt. Col. Allen West fires a round at the Tea Party
By
Dana Milbank
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Who would’ve thought Allen West would go squishy?
During the Florida Republican’s successful campaign for the House, West became a tea party sensation with his speech urging supporters to take up arms against “a tyrannical government.” “If you’re here to stand up, to get your musket, to fetch your bayonet and to charge into the ranks, you are my brother and sister in this fight,” the retired Army officer shouted. “You need to leave here understanding one simple word. That word is: bayonet.” But after less than seven months in Washington, Lt. Col. West has revised his battle plan. “You could do the front assault, like at Gallipoli or the Charge of the Light Brigade, but when you end up losing a whole lot of people,” he told an audience of college conservatives Wednesday, all you can do is “pat yourself on the back and say how valiantly we charged that hill, like Pickett’s Charge.” The smarter approach, he explained, would be for Republicans to outmaneuver Democrats, like they did in the debt-limit battle: “We checked and checkmated them.” From a bayonet charge to a Washington chess match: Talk about going native. The African American conservative with the flattop can still talk like a militant, calling Democrats “socialists” and “the enemy.” But on his first big test, West joined the socialist enemy in the soft middle. On the debt-limit legislation proposed by John Boehner, West skipped the conservative insurrection that humiliated the House speaker and brought down the bill. In fact, when GOP leaders rallied their caucus by playing a movie clip of two tough guys setting out to “hurt some people,” West joked that he would drive the getaway car. Then, when congressional leaders and the White House worked out the debt-limit compromise, West wasn’t among the 66 House Republicans in opposition. Tea party leaders howled, but West called them schizophrenic, and he theatrically brushed their criticism off his shoulders. “I called some of the tea party leaders,” he told his audience at the Young America’s Foundation conference on Wednesday. “They were all, ‘We’re mad at you,’ ” he said with a mock whine, then gave a who-cares shrug. “I asked them one simple question: If I had voted no, what would I have been voting for? And they couldn’t answer that.” West sounded downright moderate as he explained his new reasonableness. “One of the things that I think conservatives have a problem with is what I call incrementalism,” he told the students. “We believe that when we run a marathon and we start at mile zero, we’re automatically supposed to be at 26.2, but I tell you there are miles in between. . . . What are those incremental steps that get us there?” Tea party Republicans are rightly credited with bringing the nation to the brink of default, but as West’s softening shows, the number of true diehards may be small. There are enough to cause havoc in the House and to push policy to the right, but it’s worth noting that 174 of 240 House Republicans defied the tea party to support the debt compromise. West, in his speech to the YAF, recalled his father saying that “an empty wagon makes a lot of noise,” which the lawmaker said means that “people who don’t have a lot between their heads run their mouths a lot.” After awkwardly greeting his hosts (“I take a hat tip off to you”), West made a great deal of noise. He proclaimed that President Obama appears “incompetent.” He stood by his criticism of Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz as “vile,” “despicable” and “not a lady.” He said Democrats are seeking to “enslave your conscience.” He opined: “The number one thing about socialist ideology is to nationalize production, and that’s exactly what you see happening.” West’s image is built on martial imagery; the student introducing him recounted an episode in Iraq in which West fired his pistol near the head of a man he was interrogating. But by the end of the talk, West sounded less like an ideological warrior than a career politician explaining how Republicans could build majorities. “My fear is that on our side we fail to understand that when Michelangelo was given a big piece of rock, the next day he did not have the David,” the congressman said. “You’ve got to chip away at this thing.” West encouraged Republicans to “come up with a 70 to 75 percent plan,” because “if you sit around trying to come up with a 100 percent plan, while you’re doing that the enemy has already attacked you and run through you.” Particularly if their bayonets are mounted.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on Dana Milbank's column by clicking here.
Previously:
• 08/03/11 Government on autopilot
• 08/02/11 Dems mourn debt deal like death
• 07/27/11 Life imitates sport
• 07/26/11 Obama and Boehner take on Washington
• 07/21/11 Why Americans are angry at Congress
• 07/20/11 The new party of Reagan
• 07/18/11 Rob Portman, the boring Midwesterner who could bring sanity to the debt debate
• 07/13/11 John Boehner's bind
• 07/04/11 Stephen Colbert, Karl Rove and the mockery of campaign finance
• 07/01/11 President Puts Up His Dukes, As He Ought To
• 06/28/11 Rod Blagojevich verdict: All shook up
• 06/27/11 Progressives voice their anger at Obama
• 06/24/11 ‘Mission accomplished,’ Obama style
• 06/22/11 Jon Huntsman's first step toward oblivion
• 06/21/11 Scott Walker finds making bumper stickers is easier than creating jobs
• 06/20/11 A day of awkwardness with Mitt Romney
• 06/06/11 Hubris and humility: Sarah Palin and Robert Gates on tour
• 06/02/11 The Weiner roast
• 06/01/11 Congress clocks in to clock out
• 05/30/11 Hermanator II: No More Mr. Gadfly
• 05/24/11 How Obama has empowered Netanyahu
• 05/24/11 Pawlenty bends his truth-telling
• 05/20/11 Default deniers say it's all a hoax
• 05/18/11: Gingrich gives voice to moderation
• 05/17/11: Donald Trump and the House of Horrors
• 05/16/11: The medical mystery of Mitt Romney
• 05/12/11: The body impolitic: Schock photos should tempt lawmakers to cover up
• 05/10/11: Muskets in hand, tea party blasts House Republicans
• 05/09/11: The GOP debate: America -- and the party -- needs the grown-ups
• 05/05/11: Mitch Daniels, an alternative to scary
• 05/03/11: Obama's victory lap
• 05/02/11: How the journalist prom got out of control
• 04/28/11: Obama's birther day: Why did he lower himself by appearing in the briefing room?
• 04/27/11: Obama, lost in thought
• 04/24/11: Andrew Breitbart and the rifts on the right
• 04/22/11: Ten Commandments for 2012
• 04/21/11: Obama likes Facebook. Facebook likes Obama.
• 04/18/11: Without Nancy Pelosi, Obama is adrift
• 04/15/11: If progressives ran the world
• 04/14/11: Faith in political apostasy
• 04/13/11: One man's revolution is another's political expediency
• 04/11/11: Shutdown theatrics
• 04/06/11: Paul Ryan's irresponsible budget
• 04/05/11: Robots in Congress? Yes, we replicant!
• 04/04/11: Robert Gibbs, Facebook and the White House corporate placement service
• 04/01/11: Haley Barbour, the fat cats' candidate
• 03/31/11: Republican freshmen in House shut down compromise, and possibly the government
• 03/30/11: Coburn and Durbin, the dynamic duo of the debt crisis
• 03/28/11: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya
• 03/24/11: Dems as Weiners
• 03/23/11: Obama's quick trip from tyrant to weakling
• 03/17/11: Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren?
• 03/15/11: The underwear flap over Bradley Manning
• 03/10/11: In Senate's debt debate, talk isn't cheap
• 03/09/11: With Obama's new Gitmo policy, Administration officials had some 'splainin to do
• 03/02/11: Issa press aide scandal is like bad reality TV
• 02/25/11: Jay Carney: Mouthpiece for an inscrutable White House
• 02/14/11: The Donald trumps the pols at CPAC
• 02/09/11: Arianna Huffington's ideological transformation
© 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
|
