OR
Posted on 08/07/2014 2:26:34 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
This week, ProPublica released a report on the financial (and moral) corruption of a Tea Party group operating under the name Move America Forward, which was founded by one Sal Russo. Russo also helped start the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, aka the Tea Party Express. Move America Forward has run fake drives to give care packages to troops, stolen images of other charitable campaigns and passed them off as its own, and trumpeted a nonexistent partnership with Walter Reed Hospital — all while funneling very real millions to itself. The group is an industry leader at taking your Tea Party sentiments (if you have them) and turning them into profits.
Unfortunately, the continuing success of Sal Russo and the Tea Party Express is emblematic of a larger failure of the American right — and perhaps the larger project of American self-governance.
Earlier this year, The Daily Caller's Alexis Levinson reported that other Tea Party groups that had raised millions spent up to 80 percent of their money on operating expenditures, salaries, consultants, and mailing list companies, which were often owned by the people who ran the groups themselves. The Tea Party is essentially a landlord class; its fiefdom is the truly felt convictions of others.
There is nothing new about this. The Tea Party gained traction in an environment defined by massive resentment and fear directed at the Obama presidency, disgust at the bailouts of the Bush and Obama eras, and the wreckage of a Republican electoral defeat, all of which was especially conducive to the growth of parasite groups like the Tea Party Express.
In February of 2010, I reported a story from a "Tea Party Convention" in Nashville, hosted by the for-profit group Tea Party Nation. Leader Juddson Phillips left his job as a lawyer to draw a salary. Tickets for this grassroots uprising cost more than $500. The great motive behind it was transforming the organizers into richer men and political kingmakers in their state.
This gross profiteering is not unique to right-wingers. Political consultants do hilariously weird things. John Weaver, a consultant who advises prominent Republican candidates to enact his own distaste for conservatives, pulled an all-timer when he convinced his candidate's campaign to pay him, partly, through a corporation that shared the exact same name as that of another consultant's business. That helped to hide how well he was doing — until it didn't.
People who give themselves to full-time political activism deserve some recompense for their work and expertise. And of course, even the most populist of political movements will attract, and even require, professional leadership from without. After all, even punk rock bands require "the suits" to handle business and arrange for the to-be-destroyed hotel room. Even St. Paul demanded payment for his services.
But there was something especially galling about the level of self-dealing enrichment and deception at the head of the Tea Party movement, particularly because the movement started as a disgusted response to the self-dealing enrichment and deception in Washington.
Profiteering has been an acute problem almost right from the beginning for the Tea Party. It is like the reverse mortgage industry of politics: making money by giving an awful deal to an older, whiter customer base, then leaving town just as the fools realize it leaves them with nothing.
It's easy to write them off as just another bunch of opportunists. But the endemic corruption of this movement should trouble the American right, if not the American conscience. The conservative diagnosis of Washington's brokenness is that Americans have outsourced the task of self-government to a managerial class in Washington, a corruption that has transformed our nation's capital into "the Beltway," a shorthand for D.C.'s toxic culture of cronyism.
The populist right's instinctive response — the Tea Party — immediately became just another added layer of cronyism. A grassroots corruption. Really, a weed. If the American people have outsourced their self-government to Washington, the conservative movement made another dirty deal, allowing itself to be entertained in outrage carnivals run by for-profit activists. Excepting the exceptions, the populist right's response to dishonesty and graft was to generate another set of swindlers who wear flag-lapel pins, lie to their faces, and help themselves to the cash.
Yes, we built that. And H.L. Mencken laughs. Self-government is just another product, and no one can be bothered to read the fine print.
>> grassroots corruption.
Yeah, that makes sense...
Dougherty, oops... “Michael Brendan Dougherty”, is an idiot with an agenda.
I have no idea what the hell this means except that the author felt the need to throw a few Marxist terms in there to keep the faith. I mean, there is a far better representation of landlords and fiefs in the modern labor union, or in inner-city Democrat politics.
How perfectly Malthusian.
There are organizations however that grabbed the name "TEA Party" to raise money and run with it. These are professionals in the field of political publicity. They have house payments and kids to send to college too. They do provide a service for which they should get paid: publicizing candidates, organizing events, and branding are all worth money. The real question is "How much money," about which there is legitimate reason to question. If I were Sal Russo, I'd throw open my books.
To the left, ANY is "too much," which is what we are seeing here. They know how averse to the whiff of corruption conservatives are, having none themselves. So, in the hope of killing the TEA Party, using our propensities, and getting a good laugh out of it, they call it that, and throw in some names as if they know what they're talking about. It's easy.
Another such fraud in immigration is called ALIPAC. In 2012 they took in $300,000 and gave only $2,000 to candidates. It is disgraceful.
Hey I’m just a interested observer.
Sal Russo is that pimp that sold out to the GOPe amnesty crowd.
an article written by one from the giant Liberal-Left pot of financial opportunism - pushed by government assistance and direction calling the kettle of a few Conservative hucksters black
The Tea party is a “Stand Alone Complex” and isn’t some monolithic org, and it is not these subset orgs either. It is a large coalition of people bound togetehr by a basic framework of idealology.
While you have different orgs under the “Tea Party” umbrella, any one organisation DOES NOT speak for the Tea Party in General. Unlike the DNC and the RNC.
Like it it or not, the new movement is going to need a charismatic leader to move it forward....Just having a rudderless group of individual politicians isn’t going to work, if you want to uproot the current uniparty system.
>> grassroots corruption.
And the Institutional Corruption of the DNC and RNC is such a better alternative.....
At least his so called “Grassroots Corruption” is only in a few of the Tea Party groups and not all of them, CORRUPTION IS AN EPIDEMIC in the DNC and RNC!~
[ Like it it or not, the new movement is going to need a charismatic leader to move it forward....Just having a rudderless group of individual politicians isn’t going to work, if you want to uproot the current uniparty system. ]
True, in a way we need our Abraham Lincoln....
We need some upstart Senator who challenges the status quo in washington from some midwest state who is really good at debate and is very solid idealogically...
Hmmm....
Whigs, Republicans.......
I believe we have the best tea party in California. But I’m seeing wrinkles from some egomaniacs who believe they are better than others.
The Tea Party Patriots are the better group, IMHO.
Sal Russo is the liberal medias favorite tea partier the way colin powell is the liberal medias favorite republican. The man is a fake.
Because there is no “the,” only they. And they run the gamut.
OR
The left has a policy of infiltrating any and all organizations. Weather it be the GOP, The government as a whole, or the Boy scouts, The churches, or the tea party or whatever. They plan the infiltrations and they infiltrate and destroy. It is the way it works.
What's with the over the top drama, "fella?"
"you seem to have made up your mind that I am a leftist"
I'd be interested in seeing a link to confirm that. I'm sure we have had discussions here at FR before, but I don't recall ever making a judgement such as you claim. A link could set me straight.
"Just because I no longer trust or support Tea Party Express does not disqualify me from remaining a true believer"
Maybe not (strange phrase "true believer") but it does indicate you have bought into the Alinsky talking points about the TPX.
There is no reason not to trust them.
"...some posters do not fit your pre-conceived notion..."
I deal with things as they happen and generally stay on track dealing with posters responses in real time, and have a pretty good handle on who is and who isn't a supporter of our Constitutional Republic--a good indictor of a person's depth of conservatism.
I don't think I have judged you one way or another. From the beginning of your postings on this thread I have just reacted to what you posted. Starting with quoting from the article negative material as if you accepted it as truth.
"I'm not the only one you've taken on over the years and, comparing notes, you are not always concerned who you strike at..."More drama, you really have it in for me, don't you?
Yes, I don't discriminate. If someone is wrong, I will point it out. I don't really care if they are some highly touted individual, I will engage them and not cower because of their position.
Heck, just a couple of weeks ago I called Obama the "Coyote in Chief" (I thought that fit quite well as one of his titles is the C.I.C) with well over a million people watching and listening.
"...and who you mistakenly hit."
Very rare, and when I do I apologize.
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