Tea party favorite Allen West loses to Patrick Murphy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...ick-murphy_n_2083846.html?utm_hp_ref=politics Allen West Election Results: Democratic Newcomer Patrick Murphy Prevails WASHINGTON -- Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) isn't coming back to Congress. After months of battling through one of the nastiest and most expensive races in the country, the Tea Party freshman was knocked out of his seat, barely, by Democratic newcomer Patrick Murphy. NBC called the race for Murphy early Wednesday morning. With 97 percent of votes counted and the remaining votes trickling in from a Democratic region, Murphy pulled off a win by less than 1,000 votes. It was a tight race all night, which paralleled the razor-thin margins polls showed between the candidates over the past few months. West and Murphy were competing for Florida's 18th Congressional District, an evenly split district that was redrawn in 2010. West pitched himself as a military veteran who spent his first term in Congress voting to deregulate government, create jobs and overhaul Medicare as a way to preserve it. Murphy, a construction company owner who struggled for name recognition among voters, ran a campaign built almost entirely on the message that he is the antithesis to West's better-known reputation: that of a party extremist known for saying offensive things to or about Democrats. Among his more memorable comments, West called fellow Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) "vile" and "not a lady," said that more than 80 House Democrats are Communist Party members, compared being gay to liking chocolate chip ice cream, and said two times that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels would "truly be proud" of the current Democratic Party. Outside groups and both national parties dumped an extraordinary amount of money into the race. West raised more than $17 million -- an astronomical figure for a member of Congress, let alone a House freshman -- and Murphy brought in $3.6 million. Both campaigns used their money to run brutal ads against each other: West dug up a mug shot of Murphy from a college arrest for disorderly intoxication and said it showed his inability to lead. Murphy hit back with an equally damning ad that highlighted West's illegal actions in the military. In the end, Murphy calculated correctly that, despite being a newcomer, he could win by running as the anti-West candidate.