When asked about a vice presidential nod by CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien this morning, Congressman Allen West said he is "always willing and ready to serve my country in whatever capacity that the American people would desire."
"As far as the vice president thing, you know, who knows what the future lies because it wasn't too long ago, you know, I was sitting...
... in the desert of Kandahar, Afghanistan, and now I'm here talking with you," West said.
All of this veep talk was elevated past "GINGRICH/WEST 2012!!!!" Facebook posts when some lady whose weird reality show was canceled after one season was on Fox News over the weekend (video), wearing a thermal vest and giving nonanswers to questions. Even after the cancellation of her ridiculous pseudocampaign tour last summer, Sarah Palin still refused to rule out running for president but said she wanted to "move on to dealing in reality."
Instead, she went on to suggest West be "considered seriously" as a candidate for the vice presidency of the United States. Allen West, the man who didn't even blink when he told a Muslim constituent, "You attacked us," the man whose idea of intelligent political discourse is to call Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz "the most vile, unprofessional, and despicable member of the US House of Representatives."
Spectacular. A man of such unimpeachable diplomacy would certainly be an asset as a representative of the United States abroad.
"If I were in a GOP presidential candidate's shoes," Palin said, "I would first look to Col. Allen West."
She can afford to present hypotheticals like this because the only time she would ever be in a GOP presidential candidate's shoes is if she stole Mitt Romney's golden slippers. But saying West is a good choice for vice president simply doesn't make sense, if only because Sen. Marco Rubio would be far more helpful in getting Florida's support in the general election -- and a new poll from Fox News Latino makes it look like Rubio would be outrageously helpful in courting the Hispanic vote.
Outside of that, it's not hard to see West causing only slightly fewer campaign problems than Tom "Lightning" Eagleton: While Teddy Roosevelt's foreign policy slogan involved carrying big sticks and speaking softly; West's is something closer to carrying big sticks and clubbing anybody who doesn't look scared.
But he'd certainly look tougher than Obama: While the president has completely failed to fulfill his promise of shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, West has personally tortured prisoners.
While West's style has helped him garner nationwide support from angry people ("Wasserman Shitz should shut the heck up! He tells it like it is!"), he can do far more damage as vice president than he can in the rough-and-tumble House of Representatives. Will he get a chance to do it?
