A campaign ad released by American Sunrise PAC depicts West wearing a pair of boxing gloves, punching a pair of white women, coinciding with his political history in which he “socked it to seniors” by voting to cut Medicare and his vote against the Violence Against Women Act.
West said the response would be different if there was a similar ad showing a white politician punching women of color, but because he is an African American Republican, no one is concerned.
“There would be national outrage,” West said in an interview on Fox News. “That’s part of the duplicitous hypocrisy that comes with the liberal left. They believe that they can do anything, especially if you’re a black conservative.”
West said news outlets such as the Huffington Post would be “apoplectic” in their response. He placed an equal amount of blame on Civil Rights leaders, who have offered no criticism of the ad.
“Where’s the outrage from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and the NAACP about this?” West asked. “They’re not going to say anything because they’re nothing but an effective wing of the Democratic Party.”
Following West’s claims, NAACP spokesman Hilary Shelton reviewed the ads in question and said, :The language utilized doesn’t present Allen West as a stereotype of an African American,” Shelton said. “The ad has him looking very well groomed, a serious look on his face and he’s wearing a suit. The only thing superimposed is a boxing glove as a symbolic analysis of his policies being inconsistent with the values of retirees, women and African-American families.”
Shelton deemed that the ad was “fair game” by his standards, and that of 2012 PAC-fueled campaigning. He went on to say that the demographics depicted in the video were representative of West’s district, rather than an attempt to stir up racial tension. “Racist is not a term I would utilize to sum up this commercial,” he added.
A spokesman for Patrick Murphy, West’s Democratic competitor in the upcoming election, stressed that their campaign had nothing to do with the Sunrise PAC ad, though Murphy’s father is at the helm of the PAC group. The spokesman, Anthony Kusich, took the opportunity took the opportunity to further criticize West, who has been known in the past for his own extreme views.
“It is amazing to hear Allen West complain considering he recently called Social Security ‘slavery,’ said the President is trying to ‘enslave’ Americans, and told a female colleague she was ‘vile and despicable,'” Kusich said in a statement. “Further, it is telling that West does not dispute the votes cited in the ad, including his vote to dismantle Medicare, open up the prescription drug donut hole, and against women’s healthcare and insurance coverage. He even voted against the Violence Against Women Act.”