Rep.-elect Allen West (R-FL) is standing by the honor of his almost-chief of staff, right-wing talk radio host Joyce Kaufman, who pulled out of the job after media attention focused on her violent anti-government statement. And he’s using some colorful language himself to describe her detractors.
As the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reports, West called into Kaufman’s radio show Thursday:
He said he wanted people, especially those “on the left,” to understand that Kaufman would continue “to fight on your battlefield” here, and he “will fight them on the battlefield in Washington, D.C., and we will meet in the middle after we soundly defeat them both.”
The Congressman-elect said he’s now “even more focused that this liberal, progressive, socialist agenda, this left-wing, vile, vicious, despicable machine that’s out there is soundly brought to its knees. You don’t have to worry about me doing the right thing in Washington, D.C.”
West also concluded the interview: “I’ll see you on the high ground.”
After Kaufman’s hiring was announced earlier this week, attention then focused on pro-insurgency rhetoric she had made at a Tea Party rally this past Independence Day, when she discussed the people’s remedies to change the government and get rid of what she described as the tyranny of the Obama administration: “And if ballots don’t work, bullets will.”
She also discussed her plan for what she would do if the Republicans did not win the midterm elections:
When I say I’ll put my microphone down on November 2nd if we haven’t achieved substantial victory, I mean it. Because if at that point, I’m gonna go up into the hills of Kentucky, I’m gonna go out into the Midwest, I’m gonna go up in the Vermont and New Hampshire outreaches, and I’m gonna gather together men and women who understand that some things are worth fighting for — and some things are worth dying for.”
Reports also emerged that Kaufman’s statements had inspired the threats against Broward County public schools, which were made by an as yet unidentified person.
Kaufman then pulled out of the job, declaring that “I will not be used in an electronic lynching by proxy.”
Hmm…let’s hope that when West told Kaufman that he would “see you on the high ground,” that he was referring to his idea of the moral high ground — and not those hills of Kentucky.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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