JOYCE KAUFMAN: THE GELLER CONNECTION AND OTHER BAGGAGE SHE (NOW) WON'T BRING TO D.C.

You may have heard that incoming House freshman Allen West will have to pick a new chief of staff now that demagogic radio talker Joyce Kaufman has declined the job. I'll get into that in a bit, but first I want to note that, in addition to her other hatemongering activities, Kaufman is part of the Pam Geller crowd -- Geller has appeared on her show several times, and Geller was a featured speaker (along with Allen West, Geert Wilders, Frank Gaffney, and others) at a so-called Free Speech Summit in Palm Beach, Florida, last year -- a Muslim-bashing extravaganza that was hosted by Kaufman.

Surprised? Didn't think so.

Kaufman's out of a job apparently because some of her hate speech became public knowldge (I gave you a taste on Tuesday; there was also this remark about illegal immigrants: "If you commit a crime while you're here, we should hang you and send your body back to where you came from, and your family should pay for it"). Beyond that, there's this:

The radio host who made comments that may have triggered a threat against Broward County schools has announced she's stepping down as chief of staff for a recently elected conservative congressman....

Police said the call that came into WFTL 850 AM was made by a woman from outside South Florida, who said her husband was planning to carry out a mass shooting in Broward County....

According to Capt. Dan Rakofsky with the Pembroke Pines Police, WFTL received an e-mail addressed to Kaufman late Tuesday, expressing the threat.

While police will not say whether the call and e-mail were threatening toward Kaufman or in defense of her, there is some suggestion the e-mailer may have been upset that Kaufman has come under media scrutiny lately for alleged inflammatory comments she has made on her radio show....

Perhaps it's not surprising that the call and e-mail came from outside her area, given the fact that in one publicized pre-midterm speech she explained her plans if West lost his race:

I'm going to go out into the Midwest, I'm going to go up in the Vermont and New Hampshire outreaches, and I'm going to gather together men and women who understand that some things are worth fighting for and some things are worth dying for.

Now, did I mention that, according to Kaufman, this is all our fault?

"I will not be used in an electronic lynching by proxy," she said during the show. "The insanity of using a Hispanic woman to lynch a black American Army hero elected to congress -- what they're trying to do is bring down Congressman-elect Allen West. They're not fooling me, and they're certainly not fooling you. they are vile, they could care less that an election was won fair and square, they're bitter." [Kaufman is of Puerto Rican descent.]

...Kaufman brushed off her past incendiary comments, saying "they" -- apparently meaning media outlets like MSNBC, which reported on her comments, have falsely ascribed her views to West....

And she blamed "Saul Alinsky tactics" for "emails from individual nut-jobs" like the person who sent a threatening email, addressed to Kaufman, to the radio station on Wednesday, which caused a shut-down of schools throughout Broward County....

Oh, but maybe she was doomed no matter what, because a Hispanic Republican group, Somos Republicans!, protested her selection even before the school threat, expressing concerns that her selection could hurt the GOP in Florida in the 2012 presidential race:

... The campaign for the 2012 Presidential elections began the day after the 2010 midterm elections and it is Joyce Kaufman's rhetoric that will cost the Republican Party the State of Florida in 2012 if she is placed in a top level GOP position. Her anti-Hispanic views are well documented, and we now wonder if she plans on working towards eliminating the "wet-foot-dry-foot policy"? ...

Oops -- don't want to send that signal, Colonel West-- right? You don't want Cuban-American Republicans to think that you and your aide want pro-Cuban immigration policies tightened, do you?