GOP operatives crash the tea party (from Politico no less)

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35785.html


Just days after the first widespread tea party demonstrators hit the streets a year ago Thursday, Joe Wierzbicki, a Republican political consultant with the Sacramento firm Russo Marsh + Rogers, made a proposal to his colleagues that he said could “give a boost to our PAC and position us as a growing force/leading force as the 2010 elections come into focus.”


“We’ve worked hard to distance ourselves from the Tea Party Express because of their close affiliation with the Republican Party, the Republican establishment and their PAC,” said Debbie Dooley, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, a national umbrella group of local activists. The Patriots have supported a strict nonpartisan posture but also have struggled to raise money, and Dooley contends that’s partly because of Tea Party Express.


“When people donate to Tea Party Express, they think that they are donating to a tea party, because they don’t read the fine print at the bottom of their e-mails that says it is a PAC,” she said. “And that hurts the local grass-roots tea party organizers, since a lot of that is actually taking some money away from them.”


The PAC paid Russo Marsh $135,000 in consulting fees and commissions, $400,000 for e-mail and Web newsletters and at least $650,000 to produce and place television advertisements. Though some of those sums reflect payments for e-mail address list rentals and television airtime that were passed along to list vendors and television stations, respectively, many of the blast e-mails and television ads served to drum up more attention and cash for the PAC, even as they also touted Republican candidates or attacked Democratic ones.


Kelly Eustis, who was fired from his job as the Our Country Deserves Better’s political director in October, said the PAC — and particularly the Tea Party Express aspect of it — “is keeping the firm afloat.” Eustis, who started his own PAC and also has been retained to do fundraising consulting for rival tea party groups, said that while he was at Our Country Deserves Better, his colleagues regarded the tea party as “a brand name. We stole the brand name to make money.

but didn't Palin decide to fly rather than use the bus.

It can't be stressed enough.

The RNC is quite content to drain their coffers on the baggers. All new donations to the RNC are being redirected to Karl Rove's new PAC ('because of Steele'). I'll see if I can find a link...dum de yum dum...


EDIT: Here it is (goes to WSJ): http://ow.ly/1tprI

"The new American Crossroads organization will be run by former RNC Chairman Mike Duncan and Joanne Davidson, a onetime RNC co-chair. Former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie and former White House adviser Karl Rove are informally advising the organization."