Allen West Changing His Emphasis From Anti-Healthcare Extremism To Anti-Something Else Extremism

West palling around with fascist publicity hound Pamela Geller

There's a lot of competition for the title but probably the most unhinged and deranged of the teabaggers elected last November is Florida war criminal Allen West, who lives in Plantation and represents the nearby 22nd congressional district. West, who was booted out of the military in 2004 for running his own personal, unauthorized torture operation in Iraq, is in the news again. This time he's doing an about-face on his jihad against healthcare reform. After voting for all the Republican Party efforts to overturn healthcare and to destroy Medicare, West, who came under attack from his own constituents for his votes in the last few weeks, suddenly crossed the aisle and voted with the Democrats against another pointless GOP bill to defund healthcare, this time for school children. Michael Burgess's mean-spirited bill, H.R 1214 is meant to repeal the program requiring the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award grants to school-based health centers to support the operation of such health centers. It passed on May 4, 235-191, with only 4 Republicans in opposition, all, like West, in Democratic-leaning districts. The difference is that the other 3-- Steve LaTourette (OH), Joe Heck (NV) and Mike Kelly (PA)-- have reputations as mainstream conservatives, unlike West's reputation as an out-and-out, over the top fascist who invariably mouths tea party talking points. His antics are going over poorly in one of the country's most Jewish districts and he appears to be trying to change his approach to being rabidly pro-Israel to try to win back their allegiance.

West spokeswoman Angela Sachitano said in an email that the congressman “believes there are bigger funding issues to be focusing on right now including the numerous developments in the Middle East, concerning Pakistan and whether there is a link to [Osama bin Laden] and the recent unity agreement with the [Palestinian Authority] and Fatah and Hamas."

He also questioned the House’s continued efforts to dismantle the healthcare law on a piecemeal basis, she said.

“He voted to repeal Obamacare, and it was dead on arrival in the Senate,” Sachitano said. “He questions what the goal is of chipping away like this if it’s almost certain that the Senate is not going to take it up.”

A day earlier, West voted in favor of a GOP bill to strip funds from the state-based insurance exchanges created by the 2010 healthcare law. Sachitano would not say why West supported that bill but not the second measure targeting school health centers.

A frequent speaker at Tea Party rallies, West has pushed the GOP leadership to be more aggressive on cutting spending. His actions this week flummoxed members of the conference, a GOP aide said.

The aide said West and his chief of staff were urging Republicans to vote against the health center bill on the grounds that Congress should be solely focused on the conflict in Libya and asserting its constitutional prerogatives under the War Powers Act. The aide said West was “sorely mistaken and is out of step with the rest of his conference.”

The aide was speaking for Republican majority Leader Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the House. And Cantor isn't the only senior Republican legislator who looks at West as a worthless clown. West was quick to start screeching incoherently about not sending any more money to Pakistan, unmindful as ever about the delicate nature of the internal politics of that unstable, nuclear armed country. He ran to Fox News to get some attention and politicize a very thorny situation. The senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Dick Lugar, would probably like to stuff a rag in his mouth. Appearing on CNN's State of the Nation yesterday, Lugar said that "[i]t appears to be very logical that if Osama bin Laden was in that home for six years of time, a group of people there connected with the military, that a lot of people in Pakistan knew about his whereabouts." But Lugar cautioned against a bull-in-a-china-shop approach to relations with Pakistan. "Pakistan is a critical factor in the war against terror, our war, the world's war against it, simply because there are a lot of terrorists in Pakistan... Now, that's a big difference from the thoughts that bin Laden might have been proposing attacks on American trains or bridges or this very possibly and a portfolio of circumstances. But Pakistan is a very critical country."