Club for Growth folks, unpleasant? Go figure.
Being a politician has to be a rotten experience nine-tenths of the time. The only thing worse than making the rounds, begging for money, is the donors' own knowledge that you, as their chosen soon-to-be-elected public official, are merely a peon to be used or discarded. The real power is in the checkbook, and it looks like the ultra-conservative Club for Growth
doesn't let any of their supplicants forget it.
About half a dozen hopefuls tramp through the Club’s offices in downtown Washington each week to plead for the group’s support, subjecting themselves to an interview and vetting process that several described as intrusive, even offensive, in its scope.
Doug Hoffman, whom the Club endorsed for Congress as a Conservative Party candidate from New York in 2010, called the experience a “baptism by fire.” Another — a Republican who won the support of other national conservative and tea party groups, but not the Club — used less flattering terms for his interlocutors.
“They’re not even pleasant,” the Republican said: “I went in there and was already playing defense. It was very prosecutorial.”
Well, sure. Money is speech, after all, and you are only there to audition for a role as the public voice of their wallet. Don't get a swelled head and start thinking they have some respect for you. Once you've walked in that front door, it's already been made clear which side is in charge.
Former congressman and B-list James Bond villain Chris Chocola is the current leader of the infamous Club:
“Our plan to change leadership is to elect a whole bunch of Mike Lees and Rand Pauls and Ted Cruzes and Tom Cottons … and they’ll elect one of their own. That’s how you change leadership.”
... and if your response to watching the last year of Republican fiascos is "we need more people like Ted Cruz around", you
might be enough of a crackpot to lead the group that brought us Sharron Angle ('nuf said on that one) and Richard Rape-is-a-gift-from-God Mourdock.
So the takeaway here is that the ultra-conservative, Republican-trolling Club for Growth is a thoroughly unpleasant organization that treats even potential ideological allies with open distain, which may or may not have something to do with a track record of supporting similarly unpleasant and creepy people. We'll try to contain our surprise.