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