Republican “Establishment” out to get Allen West?

**Posted by Phineas

Seriously? One of the rising stars in the Party and the Tea Party movement, and yet the Florida legislature tries to harm his reelection chances via redistricting?

After last night’s Republican Presidential debate, the candidates’ respective spinmeisters made their cases to the media as to why their guy won the debate. One of Governor Mitt Romney’s spokesmen was Florida Representative Will Weatherford, and during the course of his remarks in the β€œSpin Room”, he shed a very dim light on the ongoing redistricting process in the Florida Legislature. Over the past several weeks, many Republicans have voiced their disappointment towards the Republican legislature after the release of the preliminary redistricting maps. Much of the ire concerns the proposed boundaries of Congressman Allen West’s 22nd Congressional District that would be redrawn to include far more registered Democrats.

West’s congressional district inexplicably sheds the most out support as compared to all other incumbent Republican and Democrat Congressman. A few weeks back we quoted an unnamed legislator saying that, β€œAllen West was screwed”, a statement which was originally made about made five months before the proposed maps were made public, leading insiders to believe that the fix was in against Allen West. But in light of Weatherford’s comment, it is increasingly clear that this is a fait accompli.

According to State Rep. Weatherford, this is due to compliance with federal and state law. Color me unconvinced; after the way the Republican “elite” treated Sarah Palin (1) and with what now looks like a concerted effort to suppress the Gingrich campaign (2), it’s hard not to imagine that something… “funny” is going on here. Anyone who becomes a threat to the “established order” gets the political equivalent of a Mob hit.

But this shot at Representative West could easily backfire; he was already in a tough district, so does the Party elite really want to encourage him to instead run for the Senate in 2012, when Florida’s statewide demographics are much more favorable to him?

May they get what they want and then live to regret it.

via Legal Insurrection

Footnotes:
(1) Remember how she was left to twist in the wind after being all-but-accused of inciting murder after the Tucson shootings?
(2) No, I’m not saying Newt is an “outsider” or a Tea Partier, nor that he hasn’t engaged in mudslinging, himself. (That’s an old tradition in US politics.) But he successfully linked himself to those groups in the eyes of many voters and has made himself a threat to the established order. Thus the double-barrel smear job against him, one that assumes we’re idiots.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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