Tea Party "Scam PACs" Are Screwing Over Conservatives

An article in Politico describes a problem that appears to be unique to Tea Party conservatives: PACs that pop up instantly, beg for money to defeat Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney, collect millions and then spend all that money on themselves:

A POLITICO analysis of reports filed with the Federal Election Commission covering the 2014 cycle found that 33 PACs that court small donors with tea party-oriented email and direct-mail appeals raised $43 million — 74 percent of which came from small donors. The PACs spent only $3 million on ads and contributions to boost the long-shot candidates often touted in the appeals, compared to $39.5 million on operating expenses, including $6 million to firms owned or managed by the operatives who run the PACs. POLITICO’s list is not all-inclusive, and some conservatives fret that it’s almost impossible to identify all the groups that are out there, let alone to rein them in.

People who think they're supporting the Tea Party are just lining the pockets of con artists.

“These groups have the pulse of the crowd, and they recognize that they can make a profit off the angst of the conservative base voters who are looking for outsiders,” said the influential conservative pundit Erick Erickson, who has taken it upon himself to call out PAC operators and fundraisers he sees as scams. They are “completely a drain,” said Erickson, whose assessments of candidates and groups carry particular weight among tea party activists and the Republicans who court them. “The conservative activists feel like they’ve contributed to a cause greater than themselves, but the money goes to the consultants, and eventually the activists get burned out and stop giving money, including to the legitimate causes.”

The groups ripping off conservatives under the Tea Party banner are the same sort that the IRS was going after before House Republicans hammered them for doing their job.

These organizations lie about what they're doing and rip off people who think they're helping their political movement. They do just enough to lend an air of credibility to their organization, but they pocket most of the cash.

If only there was an organization that was dedicated to uncovering fraud and abuse of the tax laws and the campaign financing system.

But wait! There is! It's called the IRS. After Citizens United the IRS had a really tough job trying to figure out who the crooks were. They tried to stop Tea Party groups with fishy sounding names that were skirting campaign financing laws and committing perjury on official forms, groups that said they were social welfare groups when they were really just self-dealing fund raisers and political hucksters. And for their efforts to protect the American people from these rip-off artists the IRS was dragged before a House committee and blasted for "singling out" Tea Party groups that were stealing from conservative voters.

The crucifixion of the IRS and the Federal Elections Commission is coming back to bite Republicans. The Republican House has forced the IRS to back off and let these pirates running under the Tea Party banner rip off conservatives. Now Tea Party conservatives are reaping the oats they sowed.

A cynical person would say that all Tea Party organizations are like this. One of the first was formed by Clarence Thomas' wife, almost the instant after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. I can just imagine the dinner table conversations in the Thomas household about how they could cash in big time with their supremely conservative credentials.

Clearly, there need to be controls over these organizations. Word of mouth isn't good enough, because so much of this fund raising goes on over the Internet or cable TV and they all use similar sounding names to intentionally confuse people.

Is the Tea Party is real, or just another scam to rip off cranky old farts?

At this point you've really got to ask whether the Tea Party is real, or just another quick-buck scam like cheap Viagra, dietary supplements, or motorized scooters, designed solely to rip off cranky old farts.

And you can't count on "luminaries" like Karl Rove, or Erick Erickson, or Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh to tell you who the good guys are. Because they all have their own PACs and their own consulting firms that are competing for the dollars of conservatives.

We need the FEC and the IRS to do their jobs and watch these clowns so they don't rip us off.