BOCA RATON, Fla. — Cheers went up throughout the night from
hundreds of Republicans gathered here in the Marriott hotel
ballroom as good news came in from throughout Florida and across
the country.
Florida Republicans had lots to cheer about: Tea Party
favorite
Marco Rubio sailed to an easy win in the Senate race, Sandy
Adams beat Suzanne Kosmas in the 24th District, Steve Southerland
easily
defeated Allen Boyd in the 2nd District and — a result that
especially caused the crowd to whoop with glee — Dan Webster
crushed the obnoxious Alan Grayson in the 8th
District.
Most of all, the crowd cheered every time the TV showed a
lead for the man whose triumph they came to celebrate: Retired Army
Lt. Col. Allen West. Results were slow coming in and it was past 11
p.m. before the newly elected congressman took the stage to give
his victory speech, and used it to issue a challenge.
“The president said not too long ago, that this [election]
was about punishing his enemies. He also talked about how this
would be about going into hand-to-hand combat. Well, I got to tell
you something: If you want to pick a fight with a U.S. Army
paratrooper, bring it on.”
West’s toughness is indisputable. In 2003, while serving
with the 4th Infantry Division in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle, West
conducted a gunpoint interrogation of a prisoner suspected of
complicity in a terror plot against West’s unit. The prisoner
confessed and the plot was foiled. However, Army brass disapproved
of West’s methods and he was relieved of command. In a June
2008 interview, West said he had no regrets: “As a commander,
your moral responsibility is to take care of your
troops.”
West displayed similar toughness as a candidate. His 2008
campaign against Democrat Rep. Ron Klein was largely ignored by the
National Republican Congressional Committee, but West resolved to
try again and — with support of the Tea Party movement that
emerged in early 2009 — became one of the NRCC’s superstars in
this cycle, raising more than $5 million for his rematch with
Klein.
Klein and the Democrats tried to use West’s fiery Tea
Party speeches against him in TV ads. When that didn’t work, they
accused him of complicity in criminal activity by a motorcycle
gang, after West attended a biker rally and contributed to a biker
magazine. “Allen West is a monthly contributor to
Wheels on the Road, a monthly motorcycle print and online magazine
that promotes the Outlaws motorcycle gang and denigrates women,”
the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a
press release timed to coincide with a TV news segment by a
local NBC affiliate.
West never backed down or apologized, and his tough stance
inspired admiration from conservatives who had grown tired of
seeing Republican run away from fights. In this year of the Tea
Party uprising, other grassroots heroes came up short in
hard-fought elections — including Marine Corps Reserve officer
Sean Bielat, who took on Barney Frank — but West won, a victory
that he insisted Tuesday night was not his alone.
“It is not, and never shall be, about me,” he told the
cheering crowd here. “I go to Washington, D.C., to be your
representative. I go to Washington, D.C., to be your voice… to
protect your life, to protect your liberty, to protect your pursuit
of happiness.… It is not my office. It is your office.”
