I’ve decided that if there is anyone in the entire country who might inspire me to be more supportive of the re-election of Barack Obama and other Democrats — just because they’re Democrats — it’s Allen Bernard West, the Republican.

Don’t pretend you don’t know who he is.

West is the first Black, Republican Congressman elected in Florida since the Reconstruction Era, in 1876. He’s the Black Conservative representative from that state’s 22nd Congressional District, where the registered voters are 82.3 percent white, 10.7 percent Hispanic and 3.8 percent Black.

He’s the guy with the graying military buzz-cut hairstyle, who always seems to have a scowl on his face, always seems to talk tersely, and who brags a lot about having once been an officer in the U.S. military. He’s also notable as a Black elected official because he rarely, if ever, has a kind word to say about anybody who happens to be Black.

If you’ll recall, Rep. West is the guy who said his only interest in joining the Congressional Black Caucus was to have an opportunity to convince the other members of the error of their political ways. He’s the same Congressman West who, after joining the CBC, famously referred to his fellow Black Congressional Representatives as “Overseers on a 21st century plantation.” He’s the man who threatened to resign from the CBC, in August of last year, because he disagreed with another member’s use of language.

As strange as this all seems, politically, this all seems to be working for the brother — so far.

In fact, from the outside looking in, it appears that Rep. West is enjoying himself, immensely. In his own version of “West World,” it seems, he never has to hesitate to speak out forcefully about any subject — even when he’s dead wrong — and especially when the topic is Black people.

Take last week, for example, when Congressman West appeared as a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), in Washington D.C., and spoke, he said, in commemoration of Black History Month.

As part of what became a West-trademarked scathing attack on the Democratic Party, he also felt compelled to describe the federal government’s support of programs for economically marginalized citizens as a form of modern-day “slavery.” West seems, somehow, to have a special obsession about slaves, overseers and plantations. Curiously, he even makes his home in a place called Plantation, Florida.

During his remarks, at CPAC, West noted that he and other members of the Republican Party were fighting to prevent Black Americans “from being trapped in a permanent underclass through dependence on government handouts.”

At that point, I imagine, with the overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly conservative audience applauding West, because he was saying all the things they, themselves, actually wanted to say, he thought it appropriate to add: “We reject the idea of the safety net becoming a hammock.”

Damn, I guess he thought that was really clever — safety net — hammock.

Then, in a master stroke of political doublespeak, the former soldier-turned-political-fire-bomber, concluded with: “For this reason, the Republican value of minimizing government dependence is particularly beneficial to the poorest among us.”

Huh?

Let me make sure I understand that: The poorer you are, the more you can appreciate and respect Republicans for cutting off your food, water and housing. Is that it?

Moving briskly, then to the heart of his Black History Month focus, West then said: “the more they come to rely on government checks, the less they learn to rely on their own ability and ingenuity.”

How ludicrous.

I’d like to hear Representative West explain that to a family of four in America today that has to live on $68.88 per week for food, under the Federal Food Stamps program. At what point do you give these poor, hungry Americans, Congressman West, a lecture about their own ability and ingenuity, when they already know, from experience, that there is only one job opening in America, these days, for every four to five job-seekers?

How do you rationalize a campaign to destroy what’s left of the “safety net” when 40 percent of the country’s unemployed have been looking for a job for at least six months?

What made West’s ill-informed comments even worse was that he cynically tried to imply, as many in his circle generally do, that the need for “welfare” payments, food stamps and the like, are something that’s peculiar to Black folks.

Once, again, the Congressman is wrong.

One of the principal things that West and his arch-conservative brethren seem not to comprehend is that the issue of “handouts” is certainly not Black-specific. In fact, the federal government’s food stamp recipients were 34 percent white, 22 percent Black and 16 percent Hispanic, in 2010.

All of that notwithstanding, the most egregious fault of West and his colleagues lies in their total unwillingness to understand that the people in this country who actually do receive the most government “handouts” are those who are the direct beneficiaries of large federal contracts, and multi-billion dollar bailout packages that are issued every day, most of whom are decidedly not Black.

For example, the top five contractors that received federal contracts, in 2009, alone, accounted for $294.6 billion. In just the categories of aerospace and defense contracts, they included Lockheed Martin at $38.5 billion; Boeing, at $22.0 billion; Northrop-Grumman at $19.7 billion; General Dynamics at $16.4 billion and Raytheon, at $16.1 billion. By comparison, the TANF, or “welfare to work” program, for an entire year, is budgeted at $17 billion.

While we’re on that general subject, let’s not forget that neither the $800 million Financial Services “handout,” nor the $747 million Stimulus Program “handout” included very much, at all, in the way of African-American business participation.

“Get up off your butts, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and start a business,” West and his fellow tea partiers say to Black Americans.

Well, that was a dicey proposition, somehow, for Black folks, even prior to the Great Recession.

In 2007, Black-owned firms generated just $137 billion, or about .45 percent of all American businesses revenues. Even more disturbing, 97 percent of Black-owned businesses generate less than $250,000 per year. Clearly, we still have some critical issues that have yet to be resolved before we allow ourselves to believe that entrepreneurship, alone, in what is still a too-racially influenced society, is anything near a panacea.

So there you have it: Allen West’s condescending and treacherous remarks on the one side, and the actual facts on the other.

What is there in the Allen Wests of the world that contributes to their palpable sense of self-loathing? What has happened in their life experience that causes them to want to perform for and entertain in a shameless, near-minstrel kind of way, for hard-hearted audiences that have no love, whatsoever, for Black and diverse people? What satisfaction can an otherwise well-educated man possibly gain from saying out loud the things that even the most cold-blooded race-baiter wouldn’t have the nerve to bring up in polite company?

Unfortunately, Allen West is not entirely unusual among Black public figures. For every Harry Belafonte, Maya Angelou or Common, there seems to be at least two Allen Wests.

Here’s something that we’ve got to do in this New Year: Let’s find out, once and for all, what causes this phenomenon. Let’s work to prevent or correct it, at all costs.

If not, it seems to me, we, as African Americans, will be hard-pressed to find political or economic success at any point in the foreseeable future.

A. Bruce Crawley is president and principal owner of Millennium 3 Management Inc.