Alan West Needs to 'Man Up' and Stop the Sore Loser Routine

Alan West: Needs to stop his recount games and finally yield to the will of voters in his Florida district.

It's now past time that FLA Rep. Alan West cease his recount games (which don't meet the state's standards, thresholds) and honorably concede that he lost his congressional seat to Democrat Patrick Murphy. As I pointed out in my blog of Nov. 8th:

"As usual with Reep whiners, however, they always want to call 'foul' over the slightest suspicion of unfair play....never mind the absence of hard evidence for any. In West's case, his campaign insists that a recount was justified because of the way ballots in St. Lucie county were tallied. According to them, in the course of counting around midnight, a small West lead changed to a Murphy advantage."


But will this Tea Party maven go gently into the good night, and finally cease and desist? As The Miami Herald also noted (cited in the earlier blog):   "Even with the tightening of the race Wednesday, Murphy’s lead remained large enough to avoid an automatic recount, which state law requires for races where the margin is 0.5 percent or smaller."

Now fast forward to current events. From the Palm Beach Post:

"Preliminary numbers released around 2 p.m. by the St. Lucie County board showed Murphy with an even greater lead, with 65,841 votes to West’s 52,704. When those results are added to the final tallies in Martin and Palm Beach counties, Murphy’s lead increased to 0.65 percent."

Despite this, Alan West still hasn’t conceded, and his team is considering what legal options it has left to pursue. How many times and in how many ways can you say SORE LOSER, Alan? Face it, you LOST! Fair and square! Your Tea Party twits are in decline and arguably many more would've lost their seats this round had the GOP not engaged in wholesale gerrymandering of dozens of different states' districts (a FACT, btw) since 2010.

West, as I noted before, had a military career so doubtless - like many military types - prides himself on a certain code of honor. What kind of honor is he showing now by disrespecting the will of the voters and turning this election into yet another Florida travesty? Weren't the long, endless lines bad enough - partly due to the ridiculously long ballots engineered by the Florida legislature, combined with Gov. Rick Scott cutting early voting days almost in half (despite certain unnamed Florida "pastors" who have stupidly insisted the voters just "didn't get into the lines early enough")

Meanwhile, Patrick Murphy’s senior adviser, Eric Johnson told the Palm Beach Post:


“It’s time for Allen West to do the right thing and concede,”

But West and his campaign are in denial. West's campaign managerTim Edison opined:

“As usual, Murphy’s people are full of garbage. This is something the secretary of state and governor will have to sort out.”

Oh, you mean like Florida's under-counted votes in 2000, taken to Katherine Harris (who put thousands of African-Americans on Choice Point rolls as "felons")? The true fact in this case is much simpler since the Secretary of State doesn't need to "sort anything out". All the voters and the state need is for your candidate to finally show the honor he claims to have demonstrated in the military - and concede to Patrick Murphy once and for all without turning this into another Florida Side Show.

Will West do the right thing? It remains to be seen, but recalling how he bitterly lashed out at congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz barely a year ago, I wouldn't hold my breath!