It's the perfect con because the rubes are the Bigoted, the Cruel and the Stupid.
Five years after Dick Armey laid out the blueprint for a racially fueled astroturf uprising as a last ditch gambit to save the Bush-devastated Grand Ole Party from extinction, four years since Glenn Beck's 'Sermon On The Mall' was witnessed by a mighty pilgrimage of the bigoted, the mean and the stupid, the Washington Post has now, finally, discover that the multitude of Tea Party Evangelists are nothing but grifters. That's some serious investigative reporting there. Breaking news. Now, who would have guessed?
Uh, ANYONE WITH A BRAIN!
Here's the WP's revelation:
A Washington Post analysis found that some of the top national tea party groups engaged in this year’s midterm elections have put just a tiny fraction of their money directly into boosting the candidates they’ve endorsed.
This is yet another example why Daily Kos is the Best Damned Newspaper in the nation, reporting next months or next years headlines today. That isn't to say that the reporter, Matea Gold didn't do some nice work convincing her editor to publish this memo of obviousness and she looked up some relevant information:
Out of the $37.5 million spent so far by the PACs of six major tea party organizations, less than $7 million has been devoted to directly helping candidates, according to the analysis, which was based on campaign finance data provided by the Sunlight Foundation.
Yep, that's a lot of money alrighty. $30M paid mostly to professional fundraisers, direct mail, telemarketing and the like. Probably some payola to conservative bloggers, they do that a lot. Mostly it went to the TeaBag Evangelicals at the top of the pyramid:
Ripping off the Bigoted, the Cruel and the Stupid
sure beats cleaning houses.
Martin, the super PAC’s chairwoman, oversees all its expenditures, according to Broughton, meaning she sets her own $15,000 monthly fee for strategic consulting — payments that have totaled $120,000 since July.
She also draws a salary as president of the Tea Party Patriots’ nonprofit arm — getting more than $272,000 in the 2012 fiscal year, according to the group’s most recent tax filing.
Her twin salaries put her on track to make more than $450,000 this year, a dramatic change in lifestyle for the tea party activist, who had filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and then cleaned homes for a period of time to bring in extra money.
This should be boffo news reportage and in a just world these kind of folk would be going to jail. Are you listening Mr Holder? Next they will be telling me that Koch millions are buying up state leges like they were paper mills, which, thanks to ALEC, they are. But here's the real BIG story. By encouraging these snakes to run the farm they are eating their own and running off any chance to evolve into a viable political party. Here is where Ms. Martin and the rest of these con folk get their money:
“I’m just so disappointed with the Republican Party and was hoping the tea party can have some influence,” said Adele Ward, an 81-year-old resident of Kerrville, Tex., who wrote a check for $1,000 to the Tea Party Patriots at the end of March. “I was certainly hoping it was to further their agenda and to support the candidates.”
But of the $7.4 million that the Georgia-based group’s super PAC has spent since the beginning of 2013, just $184,505 has gone to boost candidates, The Post found.
These scoundrels are no better, or different, than the larcenous TV preachers who tell the weak of mind and spirit that they can buy God's blessing with a tithe to their particular Mega-church. Carl Rove's Crossroads and other "establishment" SuperPacs do the same thing only theirs is a bigger con played on bigger rubes. The GOP has lost 3 of the last 4 popular congressional votes and 5 of the past 6 popular Presidential votes. This Party of Evangelical Hucksters has become obvious even to the Washington Post. Even the beltway boys are understanding that this Party is not dying, it is dead and everyone can smell the rotting carcass.
Crossposted at Reinventing Your World