Tail wagging the dog.

That would be what Allen West seems to appear to thrive on doing.

Earlier this week-our boy Allen West once again showed his “Reader’s Digest” understanding of history when he decided to play the Churchill card:

Mr. Speaker: Will we be Chamberlain or will we be Churchill? Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between 1937 and 1940, will forever be known for his foreign policy approach of appeasement. Prime Minster Chamberlain, even with Germany’s increasing aggression in Europe, turned a blind eye to the impending danger and did not prepare his nation for war…

Some would argue that comparing World War II to the debate on the budget for Fiscal Year 2011 is not an appropriate comparison. However, I would argue that Winston Churchill was prepared to lead his country courageously, in the way that would ensure England’s future. Today we are also faced with the question of protecting America’s future…

The comnparison is inapt for a whole host of reasons-not the least of which is that when it came to financial adminstration, Churchill did not exactly excel. After all, during the period he was Chancellor of the Exchequer Churchill-did not exactly fit  the “exceptional America” mold:

As Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920s he was an equally staunch and eloquent critic of arms budgets, particularly those of the Royal Navy. Motivated by a desire for funds to reduce taxes and increase social spending, as well as a sincere belief that no enemy could or would challenge Britain’s strategic position in the foreseeable future, Churchill campaigned vigorously for strategic complacency and against naval expenditure throughout his tenure as Chancellor. He promoted the formal assumption that any war was at least ten years away and he strenuously opposed Admiralty plans for warship construction, naval aviation development, and a Singapore naval base. The result was a seriously weakened Royal Navy in the following decade when Churchill demanded a more assertive British foreign policy.

Furthermore, as William Manchester pointed out in his writings on Churchill, he was responsible for one of the most disasterous economic moves to befall Great Britain in the 20th century-namely its return to the gold standard in 1925. This led to a disastorous set of events in 1926 that hampered Great Britain for a long time to come:

The effect of going back to gold, said Beaverbrook, was ‘making yet more difficult the selling of British goods abroad and so aggravating unemployment at home.’ Events soon proved Keynes and Beaverbrook right. English goods which had been priced at eighteen shillings in foreign markets now cost twenty – a full pound. This handicapped all British exporters; some became hopelessly crippled. The owners of British collieries could not compete with German and American coal if they charged higher rates. Their only alternative was to cut their miners’ wages. That was ominous. Coal mining, Britain’s basic industry, was also the most highly organized and politicized; Keir Hardie, the founder of the Labour party, had been a Scottish miner. The miners’ union protested the drop in pay. The Trade Union Congress, or TUC, the English equivalent of America’s AFL-CIO, promised to back the miners all the way, and Labour MPs declared their solidarity with them. In July 1925, two days before the cuts were to go into effect, Baldwin temporized. The Treasury, he said, would subsidize the mine owners while a commission headed by Sir Herbert Samuel investigated the situation. The prime minister bought nine months of labour peace, but the cost – first estimated at UKP 10,000,000 but ultimately UKP 23,000,000 – was exorbitant. Churchill had agreed to the stopgap, but he protested, with the rest of the cabinet, when the prime minister proposed to extend it. Keynes was in the thick of things. He asked: ‘Why should coal miners suffer a lower standard of life than other classes labour? They may be lazy, good-for-nothing fellows who do not work so hard or so long as they ought to. But is there any evidence that they are more lazy or more good-for-nothing than other people?’ They were, he said, ‘victims of the economic juggernaut,’ pawns being sacrificed to bridge the gap, required by the return to gold, between $4.40 and $4.86. ‘The plight of coal miners,’ he concluded, ‘is the first – but not, unless we are very lucky, the, last – of the Economic Consequences of Mr Churchill’.

And of course our boy West ignores the fact that in 1940, Lend Lease had not started. The Neutrality act was drying up Britains cash reserves and it was only when FDR was able to provide a massive “stimulus”-Lend Lease- that Britian was able to start the road to break even. Read some alternate history sometime about what would have happened if the US had not come into the war when it did.

And it would serve Mr. West to remember that the British people bounced Sir Winston at the end of the war. Hopefully that will provide a precedent for our current period-and provide for an equally unceremonious defeat of idiots like West, sooner rather than later.

But it is true to form for West-who never lets the facts get in the way of a good sound bite-that teabaggers will like.