You’ve heard of them – America Deserves Better PAC, Conservative Campaign Committee, Campaign to defeat Barack Obama, The Tea Party Express, The Tea Party Leadership Fund and the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund.
The MSM has finally picked up on it. The story, that I believe is designed to discredit the Tea Party itself, is devastating.
Quoting the story:
Three well-known groups — the Tea Party Patriots, the Tea Party Express and the Madison Project — have spent 5 percent or less of their money directly on election-related activity during this election cycle. Two other prominent tea party groups, the Senate Conservatives Fund and FreedomWorks, have devoted about 40 percent of their money to direct candidate support such as ads and yard signs.
On average, super PACs had spent 64 percent of their funds on directly helping candidates by roughly this stage in the 2012 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission data.
I have long been suspicious of the Tea Party Express and their offshoots – the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama, the Conservative Campaign Committee and America Deserves Better PAC. I have looked through their reports myself and have seen that 60-70% of the money raised is not going in to campaigning.
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. Three-quarters of the spending by the Citizens Fund — $5.5 million — has been devoted to fundraising and direct mail.
This was referring to the Tea Party Patriots, and continues on about Jenny Beth Martin.
Jenny Beth 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.
As a State Officer in the California Republican Assembly – I have seen first-hand one of the internal fights within the Tea Party – when they weren’t attacking CRA.
Jenny Beth Martin has been part of the Tea Party California Caucus as well. This is a loosely associated group controlled by a couple political consultants fighting for relevance. They spend most of their time attacking the CRA, the group most closely aligned with their principles because the people attempting to control the Tea Party California Caucus want to keep control of it for themselves. A collaboration with CRA would jeopardize that.
It does not surprise me that two of the founders of the Tea Party – Ginni Rapini and Mark Meckler split away from Jenny Beth Martin, Ken Campbell and the others on the national board a couple years ago. The locus of the fight was the monetization of the Tea Party.
While I have issues with Rapini – they are not issues of integrity. Rappini has chosen to believe things told to her about CRA officers without question that is an issue with Naivete. I’ve still never met her in person.
However, Jenny Beth Martin has proven to me through her actions that she is a charlatan. No true conservative that was a cause conservative would attack CRA or try to wedge the Tea Party against other conservative groups. Only people that crave control engage in that behavior.
The main thrust of article talks about how the “Tea Party” has gone professional.
I have written many times that the Tea Party I have seen wants anarchy in the political process and a small group of slick-talking charlatans prey on the Naivete and Anger of groups of people for power and profit. Ironically, this is the reason why many in the Tea Party joined a local Tea Party, because they felt used.
Worse, when many in the Tea Party find out they have been used or have made an error in judgement, in their self-righteous arrogance, they double down on the failure until they are marginalized. I am witnessing this in my own county and in various places in the North State.
Sometimes this attitude manifests in a plethora of horrific endorsements of candidates that sometimes make national headlines for their stupidity.
It is the dynamic of anarchy, lack of wisdom, lack of discernment and the proliferation of charlatans that has the words “Tea Party” upside down badly in name ID polling.
It is a tragedy – because as a state officer in the CRA, I see it clearly. I joined CRA 17 years ago for almost the exact same reasons many join Tea Parties today. I don’t oppose the Tea Party per ce’, rather I oppose the Tea Party I have seen first hand.
And Jenny Beth Martin is the poster child.
Never Ever Give to a PAC, unless you know the members of the PAC Board of Directors and know the track record of how the money is spent. Give directly to a candidate.
The Tea Party Express, a PAC run out of Sacramento by longtime Republican consultant Sal Russo, has paid Russo’s firm $2.75 million since the beginning of 2013, while donating just $45,000 to candidates and spending less than $162,000 on ads and bus tours supporting their election.