Money, Mouth Co-Location

'Baggers just don't get it, even as they whine about the Ruling Political Class being a bunch of whores motivated only by big bucks, yada.

Some leading tea party activists are concerned that their efforts to reshape American politics, starting with the 2010 elections, are being undermined by a shortage of cash that’s partly the result of a deep ambivalence within the movement’s grass roots over the very idea of fundraising and partly attributable to an inability to win over the wealthy donors who fund the conservative establishment.

[...]

Anecdotal evidence from Wilkinson and others suggests that many groups are being financed out of the pockets of a handful of organizers and activists.

Carly Fiorina & Nut-Meg Whitman writ small. Note Wilkinson's "profession," & his two Tea Parties.

“When you start chasing the money, you start having to compromise, and that’s where a lot of D.C. organizations go wrong,” said Everett Wilkinson, a South Florida financial adviser who runs two of the biggest tea party groups in Florida. “If we stay trim and we keep our overhead small, we won’t have to raise a lot of money and we won’t have to compromise. No one owns us.”

Grass roots alright. He's not in anybody's pocket. (As a financial adviser/flim-flammmer, his hands probably are in someone's pocket, or at least skimming a hefty percentage. Certainly he produces wealth & creates value — from nothing, yet! — & shouldn't be taxed on any of his labor.)

Two pages of anecdotal financial factoids follow. Follow the money, although there isn't very much of it. There's a bonus, for those hardy enough to skim to the very end: CNN's very own Erick Erickson.

Yet, allegations from tea party circles about profiteering by groups such as the Tea Party Express have hindered the ability of the movement, as a whole, to raise money, said Red State’s Erickson.

“Every movement — left, right, center or no political affiliation whatsoever — attracts its contingent of scammers and con artists and charlatans, and it takes a while for that to sort itself out,” he said. “And that’s why a lot of the money is still sitting on the sidelines.”

A year & a half of 'Bagging & they still haven't sussed who's scamming whom. And the infallible logic of "Will-not-pay-taxes-for-My-Medicare-&-Social-Security" has been applied to ponying up to get their country back from their country.

Several million fewer reasons to take these thrifty fringies seriously.

M. Bouffant