Rep. Allen West – and the Congressional Black Caucus

[Geee]

Weekly Standard:

Chances are, West and the CBC’s 42 Democratic members won’t find much on which to agree—unless he pulls them to the right. He’s a hard-nosed conservative who retired from the Army in 2003 after firing a pistol near the head of an Iraqi insurgent to prompt him to reveal plans for attacking American soldiers. West is also a Tea Party favorite. CBC Democrats tend to be very liberal.

It was the ideological and partisan divide that made Franks’s membership in the CBC so difficult. Like West today, Franks was the only Republican member. He was not hesitant about criticizing the liberal positions of his Democratic colleagues. Their opposition to the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas was “politics at its worst,” Franks insisted.

Trouble ensued. Several Democrats accused him of being a mole for Republicans. He was barred from CBC strategy sessions and from the first half-hour of meetings, when members ate lunch. Franks was later restored to full participation, but eventually he stopped coming to meetings.

At the three CBC meetings and one reception he’s attended, West has made an effort to get along. He walked up to John Lewis of Georgia, he told me, and said: “I’m from your district. My parents voted for you.” Lewis represents most of the city of Atlanta, where West grew up.

He’s met twice with Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, the CBC chairman. “We both want the same things,” West says, but wouldn’t try to achieve them in the same way. West and CBC member Alcee Hastings of Florida held a joint press conference to promote a “new mega-yacht repair facility” in Rivera Beach. So far, so good.

West, like Franks, has done nothing to mask his conservatism. When he addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February, he said federal spending should be capped at 18 percent to 20 percent of GDP and the corporate tax rate slashed to 25 percent from 35 percent.

“Liberal progressivism,” he said, “has been tried and has repeatedly failed all over the world. So why should we think it can be successful here?” And if the health care law enacted in 2010 “is so great, someone explain to me why over 200 Democratic political groups are going to the president and asking for waivers.”