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.
What you "seemed" to remember never happened.
Free Republic has vetted virtually all of the larger Tea Party groups over the years.
Usually gems of insight appeared on threads about various tea party activities since they started in Feb of 2009.
Hard to pluck them all out, but tea party groups have been watched closely here at Free Republic.
Most likely more than on any other website.
A LOT of difference between the title and the article with the "the" and then "a"
Plus, to finish the sentence, ".... a Tea Party group operating under the name of Move America Forward."
Move America Forward started years before the tea party movement got started.
And they have been doing the same things before and after the Tea Party got going.
They are a Support The Troops group, that is their main focus.
The media and their semantic gymnastics...
My favorite part was where Seal Boy shaved the Bearded Fat Lady.
We actually need another “silent majority”. The democrats and the press didn’t know who to attack.
So what is fake about him?
It certainly is. Guarantee it. Probably many of the long time members are paid shills. Like the whole “purist” movement here. A vote for nobody, is a vote for the bad guys.
I wouldn’t be surprised. Why aren’t conservatives doing the same thing? Plant the seeds, that’s why liberalism is so prevalent, they’ve been planting seeds for decades.
I hate the color of his tie. And his shirt. ;-)
Didnt he flip flop and support amnesty? If I got that wrong, let me know.
Yes; the Left has DEFINITELY infiltrated even the Weather!
I just saw an episode of 'Brain Games' that illustrated that very thing!
We do seem to be a motley collection of observant nitpickers!
I go just NUTS!! when we Conservatives get caught up using the words of the Left!!
DAMN them and their CONTINUAL attempt at ruining our language!!
Run Romney again and we STILL will NOT vote for the LOSER!
So true!
We've let them BUY the methods of communication, education, information and control in this country!
Very good point; but we have a LOT of folks, even on FR, that seize upon every scrap of badness found, to 'prove' that the WHOLE organization is faulty.
Loser? You think Romney would be on the phone with QATAR AND TURKEY ?!!?!? TELLING ISRAEL TO BACK OFF?! You not voting caused OBAMA. Do you know what the base-word in conservative MEANS? Conserve? Because voting for a write in, or whoever you voted for is not to conserve, it’s the exact opposite.
Can’t get your way so you stay in. Laughing at the poor fools that don’t know any better. Romney was the only chance we had. You blew it, just saying. At least Romney would have slowed the demise and given us a chance. You can’t pick your fights, that was the fight. There will likely never be anyone as close to the right as Romney is ever again, not after Obama and the demons get their way. Your “vote for whoever” helped usher in an age of War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. Be proud of yourself.
But don’t worry, you can watch Armageddon on your television set.
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