by David Safier
Newly elected Florida Rep Allen West is a piece of work all by himself. But let's look at his first choice for chief of staff, talk show host Joyce Kaufman.
During the summer, she said this during a rally:
“And I don’t care how this gets painted by the mainstream media. I don’t care if this shows up on YouTube, because I am convinced that the most important thing the founding fathers did to ensure me my First Amendment rights was they gave me a Second Amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will. I’ve never in my life thought that the day would come where I would tell individual citizens that you are responsible for being the militia that the founding fathers designed – they were very specific. You need to be prepared to fight tyranny: whether it comes from outside or it comes from inside.” [bold face added]
West dropped her, but he defended her on Fox, saying she was the victim of an attack from the left.
[Chris] Wallace asked West if he had learned anything from the Joyce Kaufman-pick. “Well, I think first of all what you saw was an attack from the left against Joyce Kaufman and there are some other issues with that, but they did not play the full clip of her speech when she gave that, I think it was the 4th of July,” West told Fox News Sunday. ”So once again, it was the editing sound biting. And I didn’t learn anything from it, because you just adjust and you continue on. So Joyce Kaufman was a very instrumental and helpful person in our campaign and she was the one that interviewed my current chief of staff because she knows the good match.”
No, Rep. West, editing didn't change her meaning. She said what she said. And you doubled down on your acceptance of her ballots-or-bullets language by keeping her on to interview your current chief of staff instead of condemning what she said and putting her at three arms length.
West, so far as I know, has not been repudiated by any Republican for his choice of Kaufman or for defending her. She may be nothing but a radio wingnut. He's an elected congressman who has a position of political power and authority.