With Republican women dodging questions on abortion and a GOP freshman struggling to explain how defunding Planned Parenthood was about creating jobs, plenty of observers thought the Republicans lost the messaging war ahead of the government shutdown last week as the focus centered on social rather than fiscal issues. Not Rep. Allen West (R-FL).
West — who isn’t on board with the deal Republican and Democrats reached at the last hour to fund the federal government — told reporters Friday that in his view, Republicans were on message.
“I think we did a good job at messaging, and the reason I think we did a good job at messaging is because the Democrats panicked and they started with the ‘war on women,’ ‘killing women’ and ‘starving seniors’ empty, emotional rhetoric,” West said. “It’s not working anymore.”
“Planned Parenthood is a billion dollar corporation, what we’re talking about is $360 million,” West said. “Being a good steward of the American taxpayer dollars — it doesn’t need to go to a billion dollar corporation, okay, which is supposed to be not-for-profit, but yet anywhere from a hundred to a $120 million dollars, annually, they have profits.”
“We have Medicaid, so the disadvantaged women have Medicaid,” West said. “This is not about the social issues, it is about where should the American taxpayer funding be spent.”
West said he was not happy with the final outcome and would not be supporting the continuing resolution this week. West explained that he wasn’t at the late night Republican caucus meeting held on Friday night (he had an interview with Greta Van Sustren on Fox News, he explained) but expects there to be some opposition to the deal in the Republican caucus.
“The American people expect more from us, and when you’re talking about a situation that is in the trillions, we can’t keep running in the opposite direction. If we can’t do the small things, how are we going to get to the bigger things.”
“The lesson you learn for next time around is that you don’t wait for something to run out before you start dealing with it. You know if I’m in leadership and I know you’ve got a CR that runs out on the 4th of March, I’m not going to wait until 10 days out to start dealing with it,” West said.
“It’s still not where it needs to be,” West said.
So could there be another government shutdown showdown looming this week if House Speaker John Boehner doesn’t get the Republican caucus on board?
“I don’t know,” said West. “We’ll see next week.”
Ryan J. Reilly
Ryan J. Reilly is a D.C.-based reporter for TPM. Prior to joining TPM, he worked for a news website covering the Justice Department and was a researcher for Bloomberg News. His email address is ryan(at)talkingpointsmemo.com.
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