Mark America

Surrendering Honor - Colonel Sell-Out

I come to you with a heavy heart.  I hate when these things happen, but I hate it more when they’re swept under the rug.   Suffice it to say that this is stunning to me.  At 7pm, during the newsbreak between the 2nd and 3rd hours of the Mark Levin show, I heard on my radio a thing that I couldn’t believe I was hearing.  It shouldn’t have been possible.  It shouldn’t have been real.  It should have been only a bad dream, but now I know it wasn’t a mistake.  I furiously surfed around until I found confirmation on one website of what I had just heard.  Shaking with disappointment and anger, I realized that another Washington politician, in whom I had placed so much hope-filled trust, had just thrown me under the bus.  It wasn’t me alone.  No, with me went all the Tea Party people and the folks who participated in a “Levin Surge” on his behalf less than a week ago.  Under the bus went all his promises, all the now-so-apparent false bravado, and the good will and wishes of millions.  What sort of political gun did they put to your head, Congressman Allen West, that would make you think you should abandon all your pledges?

Did they use extortion?  Did they bribe you?   That’s a standard ploy among party bosses.  They call it arm-twisting when they threaten to pull any campaign committee financial support, and when they offer funds in support, they can call it whatever they like, but most of us who supported you would call it a bribe.

Did they dig up some dirt on you?  Did they threaten you with censure for your remarks about that vile congressional Democrat from your neighboring district?  What did they do?

Was it something worse?  Did they find some real personal dirt on you?  Of a personal sort?  Did they dig up some long lost part of your past that you’d prefer stays buried?

What was it?  Surely, it’s not for the reasons in the pathetic statement you made on Fox Business. Surely, it cannot be for the sorry arguments you offered on your Facebook page, can it? On that specious logic, you would sell us out and go along with the perfectly useless Boehner plan?  Is the fact that they’re spending like there’s no tomorrow indicative that there isn’t, and they’ve just now let you in on the secret?   What?   Why?

How does any man go from “We must stand firm on the debt ceiling,” in a clear and concise declaratory fashion, to the weasel-words of surrender in just a couple days?  How does that happen?

You know, I wrote you a letter thanking you for your diligent service to our country.  Remembering what I wrote, and thinking about what it meant for me to say it, I cannot believe that you would do this without some sort of bully tactic being employed against you.  It wouldn’t excuse it, but I would understand it.

I participated in a “Levin Surge” launched on your behalf less than a week ago.  I defended you against that vile nutcase from your neighboring district.  I encouraged you, I took a moral stand with you, and I spoke fondly of your prospects as a future leader in conservatism and in the country at large.

I don’t know what’s happened to you, and I don’t know why you have reversed course, and gone off down this rabbit-hole with Speaker Boehner, but whatever it is, at the bottom of it all, what it means is that you cannot be the man I thought you to be.  Whether for favor or in fear; for expedience or for false wisdom, you have revealed that you were not what you had led us to believe.  All your brave talk, all your tough stands, all of this turned out to be…just a lot of loose talk and posturing.  You didn’t just sell me out.  It isn’t only the Tea Party.  It’s not even the country.  You sold out all you claimed to represent, and all the high principles on which you claimed to stand.  It’s all gone now.  Once again, I put my trust in a politician, and I’ve been betrayed.  Worse than that, however, you’ve betrayed yourself, and those pins you display so proudly on your lapel.  It took honor to earn them.  I wish you had the honor necessary to keep them.  I keep hoping something will surface to vindicate you on the charge that now issues from my mind, but I suspect there will be no exculpatory evidence.

I’m crushed, and I feel like vomiting.