How We Killed the Tea Party [Politico article] [View all]

[Kablooie]

Greedy super PACs drained the movement with endless pleas for money to support “conservative” candidates—while instead using the money to enrich themselves. I should know. I worked for one of them.

As we watch the Republican Party tear itself to shreds over Donald Trump, perhaps it’s time to take note of another conservative political phenomenon that the GOP nominee has utterly eclipsed: the Tea Party. The Tea Party movement is pretty much dead now, but it didn’t die a natural death. It was murdered—and it was an inside job. In a half decade, the spontaneous uprising that shook official Washington degenerated into a form of pyramid scheme that transferred tens of millions of dollars from rural, poorer Southerners and Midwesterners to bicoastal political operatives.

What began as an organic, policy-driven grass-roots movement was drained of its vitality and resources by national political action committees that dunned the movement’s true believers endlessly for money to support its candidates and causes. The PACs used that money first to enrich themselves and their vendors and then deployed most of the rest to search for more “prospects.” In Tea Party world, that meant mostly older, technologically unsavvy people willing to divulge personal information through “petitions”—which only made them prey to further attempts to lighten their wallets for what they believed was a good cause. While the solicitations continue, the audience has greatly diminished because of a lack of policy results and changing political winds.

I was an employee at one of the firms that ran these operations. But nothing that follows is proprietary or gleaned directly from my employment. The evidence of the scheming is all there in the public record, available for anyone willing to look.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/tea-party-pacs-ideas-death-214164#ixzz4HKWQfybt

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Interesting article.
Did you know the Tea Party Patriots only spent 10 percent of their cash supporting candidates while the rest went to enrich the staff and lawyers? The founder makes an estimated $450,000 a year. The Tea Party Patriots site is now dead and sends you to a Facebook page for a radio show.

Maybe the TP people will realize that, yes, the system is rigged against them.
If you're too ignorant to understand what you're voting for the system will just grab your money, give nothing back, and then ask for more.

Maybe they will just give up and stay home on election day the way they used to.