So it's basically a win-win right? He no longer has to hob nob with all those Communist vermin-by his informed count there are no less than 88 Communists among the House Democrats. And we don't have to have him in the House no more.
He's finally conceded the race though he claims that questions remain. He did the right thing though. We can't miss him until he's gone. He had done everything to hold up the process and dig his heels in. After forcing a recount he trailed by more than before it.
"Republican U.S. Rep. Allen West is announcing today that he won’t challenge Democrat Patrick Murphy’s narrow victory in their nationally watched battle for the Palm Beach-Treasure Coast congressional District 18 seat."
“While many questions remain unanswered, today I am announcing that I will take no further action to contest the outcome of this election,” West says in a statement released this morning.
Murphy has led by less than 1 percent since election night. Final results Sunday from Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties gave the Democrat a lead over West of 1,904 votes or 0.58 percent.
Until now, West has refused to concede, citing admitted errors by St. Lucie County in its initial tallying of more than 37,000 ballots from early voting. West finally succeeded in getting the county to conduct a full retabulation of its early ballots, but the recount failed to reduce Murphy’s margin to the 0.5 percent or closer that would push the race into a full recount of the entire district."
“While there are certainly still inaccuracies in the results and the actions of the St. Lucie County and Palm Beach County Supervisors of Elections rightly raise questions in my mind and for many voters, after much analysis and (Sunday’s) recount in St. Lucie County, our legal team does not believe there are enough over-counted, under-counted or fraudulent votes to change the outcome of the election,” West’s statement says.
http://www.postonpolitics.com/2012/11/allen-west-concedes-congratulates-patrick-murphy/
It's interesting that some Republicans have tried to spin election night by claiming that the House races vindicate them. Grover Norquist made this argument to try to claim that Americans did not vote for higher taxes on the rich. What was particularly odd was Mitch McConnell pointing to the House. This proves, he said, that Americans wanted the status quo. If he believes this he's really fooling himself as no one likes the status quo. And wasn't he the one who was trying to make Obama a one term President for the last 4 years?
McConnell is the GOP Senate Minority Leader. Shouldn't he be looking at the failures of his GOP Senate rather than taking credit for House races he had nothing to do with?
And since when is only losing 8 seats a cause for celebration? Is this the GOP definition of success Circa 2012? Simply only losing 8 seats and holding on to s smaller majority than you had before the election? That they held onto has many seats as they did was more about gerrymandering and redistricting more broadly.
If this is what constitutes a GOP mandate these days they're in a world of hurt. I've talked about Pat Buchanan's analysis of his party's prospects right now. Buchanan was one of those who were there at the beginning of the age of GOP Presidential dominance in 1968. He actually came up with the name of Nixon's project: The New Majority.
The Republicans starting with Nixon were able to use the Social Issue as a wedge against the Dems-who dominated since FDR with the Economic Issue. At this point Buchanan admits the GOP is approaching the graveyard.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/11/pat-buchanan-unreconstructed-nixonite.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DiaryOfARepublicanHater+%28Diary+of+a+Republican+Hater%29
As Buchanan points out GOP has no way of getting back in places like NY, MA, Ill, or CA anytime soon. I suspect things are only going to get worse for them. They won't learn until they've lost everything. I'll believe they can learn when I see it. They are at least very slow learners.
If nothing else this loss by Allen West underscores just how poor a night they had. They can hold onto the narrative that the House vindicates them in some way for now. But in truth they hold certain institutional advantages for now-in terms of how districts are joined; there are too many states with a few 90-10 Dem districts with many more 60-40 GOP districts. In the longer term the same problems that have hurt them nationally and in the Senate will show up on the House if they don't make changes.
In many ways it's still not implausible to argue that it's not so bad for the GOP. Superficially you can argue that what we are seeing remains split government. And haven't we seen this more or less since Nixon's rise in 1968? The GOP took over nationally but they never were able to take back Congress. Then the Dems came back nationally in 1992 but the GOP took back Congress in 1994. Still now, we have a GOP House with a majority over 30.
Again, superficially this seems true. Yet what we've seen is that the GOP doesn't perform too well during on year elections. It's big victories over the last 20 years have happened during off years with electorates that tend to be more Republican-1994, 2002, 2010. They haven't had a big on year election since 1988.
The last bastion is you can point out that the GOP has a lead in Governors and won some state races. Still, what's interesting is that many former red states have become purple. The GOP obviously has some strong red states. However, Romney performed very poorly in closer races-the swing states.
The demographic shift in time will make even a state like Texas purple. Still as a Democrat I guess I shouldn't worry too much if the GOP gets it wrong. If they do it will only help the Dems going forward. If they do learn something we might actually get a few things done. So it's win-win at this point.
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