I posted the other day about how Allen West was getting hurt in the Florida redistricting.
I linked to the Shark Tank, a Florida blog, which gave background going back several months about how Allen West was being targeted for unusually harsh treatment by fellow Republicans in the state legislature.
A natural response, which in fact is what happened, would be to chalk it all up to the supposedly immovable force of redistricting laws. That’s a hard sell on the surface since if it merely were a matter of punching in the numbers and seeing what came out, there would have been no need for months of discussions and negotiations.
But that becomes harder to believe considering this commentary by J.E. Dyer in HotAir’s Greenroom about which two Republicans are hurt the most:
To point out some more “obvious,” this is a Republican-controlled legislature. Did the Republicans allow other GOP-held Congressional seats to be severely jeopardized by the new district lines? Apparently, only one. An analysis done for the Washington Post last week indicates that Allen West’s and Tom Rooney’s seats are the ones in the most danger. Getting positive help from the redistricting are Republicans Dan Webster, Sandy Adams, Mario Diaz-Balart, and John Mica.Redistricting isn’t as easy as it looks, of course. But it is not believable that it is either a fully non-partisan process – when anyone is doing it – or that the Florida GOP leadership was neutral as to which seats were jeopardized by their plan.One possibility is that Republican leaders thought West and Rooney were the most likely to achieve reelection in newly hostile districts. They haven’t said that, so that’s pure speculation based on trying to put this in a positive light.Meanwhile, who are Florida’s arguably most outspoken, conservative Republican Congressmen? West and Rooney.
Update: Mark Levin interviewed West on January 30. West stated that maps were submitted to the legislature which would have kept his district intact and still been in compliance with state and federal law. Levin said he did not believe the excuses being made that the map had to be drawn the way it was as a matter of law.
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