Dems In Disarray?

Allen West inherited a strong party passed down from the heroic efforts of Steve Munisteri, ably transitioned and sustained by the work ethic of successor @jamesdickey after Tom Mechler’s failed reign.

Now, the party is in the weakest financial position in at least 10 years.

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— Matt Mackowiak (@MattMackowiak) June 4, 2021

Now we are locked in to an obscene and wholly unnecessary security contract at TX GOP.

Our field effort is decimated.

We’ve done NOTHING to continue our massively effective voter registration effort.

And RPT lost its finest executive director in Kyle Whatley.

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— Matt Mackowiak (@MattMackowiak) June 4, 2021

Allen West has always been all about himself, leaving disaster in his wake: military career, Congress, NCPA, now RPT.

Our next @TexasGOP chair should be focused, serious, selfless, hard working, strategic & disciplined, unlike our soon to be former chair.

Go @CatParksTX!

END

— Matt Mackowiak (@MattMackowiak) June 4, 2021

Politics, unfortunately, is not a set of scales, where one side rises as the other side sinks. But the Texas GOP being in a weak financial condition is fine with me. Whether the Texas Democrats can take advantage of this is another matter. All I can tell you, from the outside, is that the Texas GOP spent a lot of money on lawyers losing a fight to remain in the city-owned facility in Houston for their convention last summer, at the height of covid lockdowns. It would have been a Pyrrhic victory had they won, but why they insisted on it to the bitter end was always a mystery to me.

I will say, the minute I saw the news that West was resigning after only 7 months I knew he was looking for greener pastures.  He's always been a very Trumpian political player:  it's all about him, and nobody else.

I did like this bit, from the announcement:

Lt. Col. Allen West will take this opportunity to prayerfully reflect on a new chapter in his already distinguished career.

Yeah, sure:

West was deployed to Kuwait in 1991 and Iraq in 2003. In 2003, West was charged in an incident that involved the beating and simulated execution of an Iraqi policeman, with West firing a gun near the Iraqi man's head during an interrogation. After an Article 32 hearing was held, West accepted non-judicial punishment, was fined $5,000, and allowed to retire as a lieutenant colonel. After leaving the military, West moved to Florida, where he taught at a high school for a year and worked for a defense contractor, part of this time spent in Afghanistan as a civilian adviser to the Afghan National Army.

West entered politics in 2008 as the Republican nominee for Florida's 22nd congressional district, losing to Democratic incumbent Ron Klein. In a rematch in 2010, he won the seat, coinciding with significant Republican gains in that year's midterm elections. West took office in January 2011 as the first African-American Republican member of Congress from Florida since Josiah T. Walls left office in 1876 near the end of Reconstruction. In Congress, West was a high-profile member of the Tea Party Caucus and the Tea Party movement. Redistricting due to the 2010 census resulted in West switching to Florida's 18th congressional district for the 2012 House elections. He lost to Democratic nominee Patrick Murphy in what was the most expensive congressional House race of that cycle.

West ran for the chairmanship of the Republican Party of Texas in 2020. West became the new state chairman after he defeated the incumbent chairman, James Dickey, on July 20, 2020. Widely described as a "firebrand conservative", West has been criticized for comments about Islam, descriptions of President Barack Obama as a "low-level Socialist agitator", and unfounded accusations that 81 Democratic members of Congress were members of the Communist Party.

He won't be missed.