Obama Raises $45 Million In February But GOP Super PACs Have Deep Pockets

Obama raises $45 million in February for re-election effort


President Barack Obama collected $45 million for his re-election bid in February, accelerating his fundraising pace as his campaign frets over an oncoming spending blitz by Republican-leaning outside groups.

Obama’s monthly haul was nearly twice as much as the $23 million per month average he raised during the final three months of 2011 and more than the $29.1 million he raised in January. Yet the largesse still fell short of the $56 million he raised in February 2008, when he was seeking the Democratic nomination against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

With Republicans locked in an extended primary, Obama’s team has tried to build a large 50-state operation that will help it register new voters, bring back past supporters and boost turnout. Obama’s campaign had about $75 million in the bank through the end of January; totals for February were not immediately available.

Campaign officials have implored supporters to donate money and get involved, pointing to Republican-leaning super PACs expected to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat the president. Obama’s campaign said earlier this year that it would bless big-money super PACs supporting Democrats as a way of countering the Republican effort.

In an email to donors last week, campaign manager Jim Messina cited a poll showing Obama trailing Republican Mitt Romney and asked them to get involved.

“We’re looking at a race that will be tighter than you think. And the other side has groups ready to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to tear down President Obama,” Messina said.

Obama has consistently outraised his Republican opponents. Romney, who has led the Republican field in fundraising, brought in $6.5 million in January, about a quarter of what Obama raised that month.

But Obama’s totals in February lagged behind what candidate Obama raised four years ago, before he had the benefit of the entire Democratic Party apparatus behind him.

Kirsten Kukowski, a Republican National Committee spokeswoman, said Obama was “having a hard time convincing voters he deserves another term” following three years of “record debt, high unemployment, and soaring gas prices and healthcare costs.”

Obama’s campaign said nearly 350,000 people contributed in February and the average donation was about $59 for the entire election cycle. Nearly 98 percent of the donations were $250 or less. The money was spread among Obama’s campaign, the Democratic Party and two campaign funds.

Obama has boosted fundraising efforts in recent weeks, holding events last month in Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Last week, Obama raised money in Chicago and Atlanta.

The fundraising reports were being filed ahead of a Tuesday campaign finance deadline for presidential campaigns.


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Sources: AP, MSNBC, Politico, Washington Post, Youtube, Google Maps

Democrats In Congress Being Outspent By GOP Candidates (Super PACS)

Post-Citizens United Money May Swamp Congressional Candidates

Political spending by deep-pocketed donors and cash-rich corporations threatens to sow chaos in this year's congressional races, political consultants warn.

A billionaire or corporation writing a check for $1 million -- or even $10 million -- isn't enough to swing a presidential election. But when it comes to congressional campaigns, it could be plenty.

“You can work for months and years to develop a fundraising advantage over your opponent of $2 million, $5 million or $10 million. And all that can be wiped out in seconds by a few people giving to a super PAC," said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman.

While Republican and Democratic candidates are, in theory, equally susceptible to that kind of unlimited outside money, it’s the Democrats who sound much more alarmed.

"No one is safe, and everyone's got to protect themselves," said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. "Super PACs can strike at any time they want."

"There's sort of no way to fend it off because it's so much," said progressive strategist Mike Lux. "It's just so much money that even when you know it's coming, it's hard to deal with."

Lux said his biggest worry is the last-minute ad blitz -- a staple of elections dating back to the '90s. Now with the rise in outside money, election-eve ads can hit "at an even more massive level,” he said. The result: candidates who "can't compete with an overwhelming mass of money at the end that swamps the close races."

The Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, along with a subsequent lower court ruling, struck down post-Watergate caps on political contributions by corporations and individuals. As a result, super PACs fueled mostly by contributions of $500,000 or more have already pumped $78 million into the Republican presidential primary, outspending everyone else and flooding the airwaves with negative ads.

Successful congressional candidates in 2008 spent an average of $1.4 million to win a House seat and $7.4 million to get elected to the Senate, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. Potential spending from super PACs -- and their secretive 501(c)(4) cousins -- dwarfs those amounts.

One super PAC, whose wealthy donors are targeting incumbents from both parties, has already spent nearly $1 million in just eight congressional primaries. But that's widely considered to be just a minor foreshadowing of what is to come in congressional races in the general election.

And while most outside money will likely be targeted for maximum ideological payoff, in some cases it could also be personal.

"If somebody is pissed off at a particular member for a piece of legislation -- even a line of questioning at a committee hearing -- I absolutely see that kind of revenge giving," Lux said.

Sheinkopf said he imagines there will be districts where people with money "hate the incumbent or the challenger" and can now pull out their checkbook and underwrite a deluge of negative ads. The result, Sheinkopf argued, is that "personal pique will substitute for democratic reasoning." Even candidates who are feeling confident are likely to hoard money they might otherwise have sent to their party committees or to members of their party in closer races, Sheinkopf predicted.

"It will mean the continued breakdown of both parties, because it's now every man and woman for themselves," Sheinkopf said.

With all that money sloshing around outside the official campaigns, said Gary Kalman, federal legislative office director for the U.S. PIRG consumer group, "there's going to be certain people that are going to be little bitty players in their own elections."

Meanwhile, competition for voter eyeballs grows more ferocious. "What's different is you used to be an only child or in a well-behaved family. Now you're in a family of eight, and if you don't eat your food quickly, it's going to disappear," said Democratic media consultant Will Robinson.

Federal Election Commission rules still require that broadcast stations give candidates for federal office "reasonable access" to the airwaves at the lowest cost available. So super PACs can't actually push candidates who have already bought ads out of the way.

"But what they can do is come in and buy every available piece of air around them," Robinson said. Some media markets will sell out, as Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia mostly did in the 2008 general election. "Things are very Darwinian right now," Robinson said.

Robinson predicted that advertising scarcity will also extend to prime online ad space. In key swing states, "online is beginning to disappear already," he said.

Another feature of the post-Citizens United world is that while super PACs have to disclose their donors -- not in real time, but eventually -- donors who don't want anyone to know they're behind a given ad campaign are allowed to launder unlimited political contributions through tax-exempt groups, known as 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) organizations for the Internal Revenue Code regulations that cover them.

Those ad campaigns make it impossible for the public to know for sure where the money is coming from -- but, Lux contended, not necessarily that hard to guess. "It'll be coming from the banks, number one, because everybody hates them so badly," he said. "Certainly oil companies will want to hide their dollars. Some of the big telecom companies."

Not everyone is unhappy with the new order, of course. "I'm more optimistic about the current system than I was prior to Citizens United," said Republican strategist Keith Appell. "Both sides can raise plenty of money," he added. "My feeling is as long as the playing field is level, then that’s the best of all worlds. In the end, it nets out fine."

Democratic political strategist James Carville said that the ability to spend unlimited sums endows big donors with so much power that they don't even have to use it.

"You can threaten," he said. "The real impact of this is, let's say you want something -- there's a bill that you really care about -- you go to someone kind of on the fence, and usually you would say, 'I'll do a fundraiser for you.' Now you say, 'If you don't vote for this, I'm going to dump a million dollars on you.'" Or, he continued, "'If you don't vote to give me a pollution exemption, I'm going to croak you.'"

"The potential for mischief here is pretty good," Carville said.

Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson and his family have kept Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich alive in the primaries, with at least $10 million in contributions to the pro-Gingrich super PAC.

But Adelson's ability to spend unlimited sums will also make him hugely influential the next time he wants something from Congress, noted Carville. "He could say, 'Anybody votes against this? I'm worth $23 billion.'"

Indeed, all the moguls need is few examples of "croaking" people who crossed them, Carville said, "and you establish the principle."


Sources: Brookings Institution, Hoover Institution, Huffington Post, Youtube

Mitt Romney's Mysterious Super PAC! Donated $1M Then Dissolved (Investigation?)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Secret Corporate Money Powers Pro-Romney Super PAC

A corporation that contributed $1 million to a political action committee supporting the presidential bid of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has been dissolved just four months after being formed. The company's fold, and its relationship to the Romney campaign, marks the new contours of the continued breakdown in campaign finance disclosure in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

The company, W Spann LLC, donated to Restore Our Future PAC on April 28 and cancelled its certificate of incorporation on July 12, according to Delaware state records obtained by NBC's Michael Isikoff.

The company's records were signed and handled by Ropes & Gray lawyer Cameron Casey, a Boston-based expert in estate planning for "high-net-worth individuals and families," according to an official bio on the Ropes & Gray web site.

As Isikoff notes, Ropes & Gray recently represented Bain Capital, the investment firm once headed by Romney. Both the firm and the PAC refused to comment to NBC about the contribution.

Bain Capital's New York office is located at the same address that W Spann listed on its contribution to Restore Our Future. They share the address with Akin Gump lawyer Randy Levine, who is also a major Romney supporter.

Restore Our Future was created by three former Romney campaign staffers to support his bid for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. The committee reported raising $12.2 million during the first six months of 2011, the largest amount raised by any Super PAC.

Super PACs are political committees that can receive unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and unions so long as they spend only on independent expenditures. Restore Our Future is not allowed to coordinate with the Romney campaign in any way.

The W Spann contribution is one of four $1 million contributions given to Restore Our Future. Two of the other three came from small, unknown corporations and the third from hedge fund billionaire John Paulson. Records filed with the State of Utah for the two corporations did come with some identifying information, connecting them to the executives of the anti-aging product company Nu Skin Enterprises.

The big question for the individuals behind W Spann and Restore Our Future is whether any of their activity is illegal. While it is perfectly legal for a corporation to form and dissolve or to contribute to a political committee like Restore Our Future, it is illegal to use a conduit to contribute to a political committee.

According to Paul Ryan, FEC program director and associate legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, "Federal law clearly prohibits making a contribution in the name of another." Ryan explained that it would be illegal, "if the humans behind the straw corporation put money into the straw corporation for the purpose of contributing to the Super PAC. It's illegal under federal law to use a straw donor."

The possible legality of contributions like the one W Spann made to Restore Our Future looks like an oversight on the Supreme Court's part. The Court allowed corporate spending on independent expenditures in the Citizens United decision, but also affirmed the need for disclosure.

In the Citizens United decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: "Prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions. This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages."

"People can set up a corporation give millions to a Super PAC and shut it down before they have to file annual reports," allowing donors to remain anonymous, Brett Kappel, counsel at Arent Fox and an expert in campaign finance, told HuffPost. "This was a natural extension of what the Supreme Court allowed in Citizens United."

Still, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer said the $1 million corporate donations to Restore Our Future "may well be a violation of the campaign finance laws." In a statement, Wertheimer called for the matter to be "investigated by the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department."

"It takes nine months to create a human, decades for that human to be able to make judgements reaching the level of contributions to political causes, but only a matter of days to create a corporation," Ryan said. "There's a big difference between humans and corporations that the Supreme Court ignored in their Citizens United decision."


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Sources: AOL, Huffington Post, MSNBC, Google Maps

Pat McCrory's Prelude To Victory 2012 Speech (Videos)

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Sources: New Leadership PAC, Youtube, Google Maps

Andrew Breitbart Accuses Dems Of Racism, Debates Daryle Lamont Jenkins

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Sources: TPM, One People's Project, Youtube, Google Maps

Conservatives Attacked By Liberals, Compared To Klu Klux Klan

Conservatives Target Their Own Fringe After Being Attacked By Liberals


After months of struggling to harness the energy of newly engaged Tea Party Activists, the conservative establishment - with critical midterm congressional elections on the horizon - is taking aim for the first time at the movement’s extremist elements.

The move has been cast by some Conservatives as a modern version of the marginalization of the far-right anti-communist John Birch Society during the reorganization of the conservative movement spearheaded in the 1960s and 1970s by William F. Buckley Jr.

“A similar effort will be required today of conservative political and intellectual leaders,” former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson wrote in his column in the Washington Post . “It will not be easy. Sometimes it takes courage to stand before a large crowd and proclaim that two plus two equals four.”

But for Gerson and other conservatives, this is not just an intellectual exercise. They have a very specific political goal – to deprive Democrats and their allies a potentially potent weapon to use against the GOP in November.

“I don’t believe we should be giving (extremists) a platform or empowering them to do anything based off their conspiracy theories,” said Ned Ryun, president of American Majority, “because they give the left ammunition to try to define the tea party movement as crazy and fringy.”

The attempt “to clean up our own house,” as Erick Erickson, founder of the influential conservative blog RedState, puts it, is necessary “ because traditional press outlets have decided to spotlight these fringe elements that get attracted to the movement, and focus on them as if they’re a large part of this tea party movement. And I don’t think they are.”

Until recently, organizers and activists mostly seemed content to ignore, or in some cases tolerate, extremists in their ranks, confident they’d be drowned out by the hundreds of thousands of activists who took to congressional town halls and marches around the country to protest big-spending initiatives pushed by President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress.

But inflammatory rhetoric such as former congressman Tom Tancredo’s racially tinged speech at this month’s Tea Party convention, reports of the involvement of right wing militia groups, and the continued propagation of conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama have sometimes cast the movement in an unfavorable light.

Erickson has advised new tea party organizers on how to avoid affiliations with extremists, and this month banned birthers – conservatives who believe that Obama was not born in the United States and is, therefore, ineligible to be President – from his blog (he has long blacklisted truthers, those who believe that the U.S. government was complicit in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks – a conspiracy theory with devotees across the political spectrum).

“At some point, you have to use the word ‘crazy,’” said Erickson.

Ryun’s American Majority, a group that trains tea party activists and others around the country, has done much the same thing. Its website has moved to close its sessions to activists who identify themselves with the birther, truther or militia movements, or the John Birch Society.

Ryun conceded that extremists are involved in the tea party movement, but he said “it’s just such a small percentage and it should not be portrayed as representative of the broader movement .”

The fringe-fighters’ methods range from censuring signs at rallies or banishing unruly participants completely to challenging the media’s focus on the fringe and highlighting the movement’s diversity and tolerance.

They have gone out of their way, for example, to promote activists and movement-backed candidates of color, including tea party stars Marco Rubio and Allen West, running for U.S. Senate and House, respectively, in Florida, and Texas Senate candidate Michael Williams – all Republicans.

Ryan has another strategy. He has commissioned a poll that he thinks will show that tea partiers share a commitment to reducing taxation and government spending with independent voters and prove that the tea party movement is “ very much mainstream.”

But the tea party movement’s decentralized structure, vaguely defined goals and anti-establishment tone makes it an attractive place to channel angry feelings. Mainstream media organizations such as the New York Times, which recently ran a 4.500 word story focusing on the infiltration of the movement by a militia-linked group called Oath Keepers, have recently focused on that aspect of the movement.

And, as tea party supporters such as Schultz have expected, liberals have been acutely attuned to any evidence of extremism.

Independent of their actual numbers, it’s in both political parties’ interests to inflate the influence of the other side’s fringe, said Tom De Luca, a Fordham University political science professor who studies political movements and wrote the 2005 book “Liars! Cheaters! Evildoers! Demonization and the End of Civil Debate in American Politics.”

“That creates this dynamic that seems to exaggerate the influence of the extremes,” DeLuca said.

Much as conservatives have sought to link Democrats to environmental extremism or socialism, he said, it’s an obvious countermove for the left to try to link Republicans with the more extreme elements that have gained traction around – and sometimes within – the tea parties.

So it was that liberals have demanded to know where Republicans stood on Obama’s citizenship, or that last week found left and right debating which side had more in common with Andrew Joseph Stack III, the software developer who crashed his plane into the Austin, Tex., IRS offices.

The left seized on a comment by hard-line-conservative Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) reportedly expressing empathy for the pilot’s anti-tax views. Rush Limbaugh retorted that Stack “sounds like he's blaming Bush and Reagan, asserting that he sounded “almost word-for-word for Nancy Pelosi. Almost word-for-word for Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama.”

DeLuca predicted that another “Bill Buckley moment” will only occur when the political damage done by extremists outweighs the boost the tea party movement has provided to conservatives generally and the Republican Party specifically.

“My guess is their basic stance will be to try to juggle as long as they can,” he said.

That approach – and its drawbacks – was on display at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of Washington’s conservative establishment. It featured the John Birch Society as a co-sponsor. And, while conference organizers nixed a panel on Obama’s citizenship, a birther contingent still made its presence felt, as did the Oath Keepers, who co-sponsored the conference.

After filming a brief segment at the conference, liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, a leading tea party antagonist, concluded on her show that “the conservative movement right now is really not afraid to let its freak flag fly … They‘re happy to show off the ‘we want another revolutionary war,’ ‘we think the black president is arrogant,’ ‘we think the apocalypse is nice’ side of themselves.”

Liberal commentators similarly highlighted the extremism on display at this month’s National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, which included a speech by WorldNetDaily Editor Joseph Farah questioning Obama’s citizenship and one by Tancredo asserting Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."

A blogger on the liberal site Daily Kos asserted Tancredo’s speech revealed the “REAL reason” tea partiers are upset: “A black man is President and their White Priviledge is fading.”

Tancredo’s speech was not widely condemned by conservative intellectuals or media, but immediately after Farah delivered his, he was confronted in a hallway outside the convention hall by conservative media entrepreneur and fellow convention speaker Andrew Breitbart, who said it was disservice to the Tea Party Movement to infer its activists are “all obsessed with the birth certificate, when it’s not a winning issue.”

Others cited the jeering of an anti-gay activist at CPAC who condemned organizers for inviting gay Republican group GOProud to participate. Conservative author and TownHall columnist Ashley Herzog said it was proof that “CPAC, and the conservative movement in general, isn’t a haven for haters after all,” and urged the left to view a video of the incident, which she said evidences “a lack of bigotry (that) must be painfully puzzling to liberals.”

Conservatives similarly pushed back against a New York Times blog post that accused a CPAC speaker of ripping Obama “in racial tones," partly by affecting a "Chris Rock voice" to mock the president.

They noted that the speaker – like the comedian Rock – is from Brooklyn and speaks with a regional accent, demanding an apology.

And in a clever web video that went viral this week, the Dallas Tea Party called out MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who had mocked the mostly white make-up of the Nashville convention of what he called the "Tea Klux Klan, comparing its racially diverse leadership to MSNBC’s mostly white host lineup.

Judson Phillips, the Nashville tea party activist who organized this month’s convention, said it’s incumbent on local tea party leaders across the country “to control the message and to prevent the tea party movement from being hijacked.”

In the run-up to a July tea party convention he’s planning in Las Vegas, Phillips said, he’s planning on asking speakers “to stick to our message, which is unity headed into the fall.”

Sources: Politico, Fox News, Wikipedia

Gay Republicans Draw Ire & Support At CPAC

Gay Republicans Draw Support, Concern At CPAC


An unlikely sponsor at this year's annual conservative conference is hoping to not only promote the issues that set it apart from many Republicans, but also draw attention to the beliefs they share.

The group is called GOProud -- a name that combines GOP and gay pride. So far, the group is getting a mixed response at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

GOProud was founded by former members of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay and lesbian Republican grass-roots organization.

GOProud has a booth at CPAC just two spaces away from the exhibition for the National Organization for Marriage, which wants the government to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

The organizations obviously see social issues differently.

"It's the ultimate Washington power grab to say let's have a federal constitutional amendment that will federalize the question of marriage," said GOProud chairman Christopher Barron.

Through speaking at the event, exhibiting a booth and co-sponsoring the conference, GOProud hopes to highlight the views it has in common with other Republicans -- limited government and fiscal responsibility.

But the members' nontraditional conservative views are rankling some attendees at CPAC.

Liberty University Law School, founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, boycotted the event after GOProud was announced as a co-sponsor.

The younger activists, however, are more accepting. About 10,000 people are expect to attend CPAC, and a conference spokesman said at least 60 percent, and maybe as high as 80 percent, of the attendees are expected to be younger than 30.

"People in the under 40 age range have become a lot more accepting of homosexuality," attendee Deborah Corey said. "But I think there's also more of an attitude among Americans that's sort of more libertarian that says people have the right to do what they want to in their own lives and to take the consequences for it, as well."

Chris Plante, who is running the booth for the National Organization for Marriage, said being two booths away from GOProud wasn't an issue.

As cameras rolled, he introduced himself to Barron.

"I hope we'll have more time to talk over the next four days. Maybe we can have a beer later," Plante said.

"We can have a beer summit later. It worked for Obama," Barron joked.

A meeting, yes. But don't expect a meeting of the minds.

"Gays and lesbians have the right to live as they choose, but they don't have the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us," Plante said.

The organizers of GOProud will be participating in a roundtable on Saturday, but they won't be talking about issues that affect gay Americans. Instead, they'll be talking about technology and outreach. They say that's their choice.

Sources: CNN

Conservatives Are Fired Up & Ready To Win Again

Conservatives, Fired Up!


A frisky, fun keynote by Beck, an encouraging straw poll that left Palin with a happily meager 7 percent—CPAC showed that for better or worse, the GOP is fired up and ready to go.

There’s a joke they used to tell in Franco’s Spain: two guys in bar. First guy says to the other, “What do you think of Generalissimo Franco?” Second guy looks around nervously to see if anyone is listening, then says to the guy, “Follow me.” They leave the bar, walk down a deserted alley. The second guy finally stops, looks around again to see if they were followed, then whispers to the first guy: “I like him.”

I thought of it Saturday while listening to—brace yourselves—Glenn Beck, giving the keynote at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

I’ve not been a fan of Beck’s. (Rather the opposite, in fact, while conceding that he is at least a very talented demagogue.) But there was something refreshing in his fundamental message, to wit, We have seen the enemy, and it is us. Or at least, Not just us.

Using a personal trope—Beck is recovering alcoholic—he likened the Republican Party’s big-spending habit to the appetite of a drinker who can’t stop himself. He also indulged in a daring bit of palimpsest, rewriting one Ronald Reagan’s most memorable lines: “It is still morning in America. It just happens to be kind of a head-pounding, hungover, vomiting-for-four-hours kind of morning in America.” Not bad. Beck may not be the first repentant Republican, but he is certainly the most operatic, a kind of comic Pavarotti of the right.

It’s perhaps worth noting that last year’s CPAC keynoter was Rush Limbaugh, who, like Beck, is in recovery. What is it, one wonders, about these two bigfoot thunderers on the right that they share this personal history? Whatever else, it is a humanizing trait, and on Saturday night, it allowed Beck to be frisky and have fun, as he taunted Republicans, urging them to come clean themselves about their own recent boozing. If the Republican Party, he noted, had given a Tiger Woods-type apologia, he’d go all out for it. (Not, really, that he already hasn’t.)

The other encouraging surprise of the conference was the concluding straw poll. Ron Paul came in first, with 31 percent, to Mitt Romney’s 22 percent and—hallelujah—happily meager Sarah Palin’s 7 percent.

Thirty-one percent is, to be sure, several bricks shy of a landslide. It may, really, amount to a “none of the above.” Aside from his borderline-kooky isolationism, there are appealing aspects to Dr. Paul. (He is, in addition to being a Texas congressman, an Air Force flight surgeon and OB-GYN who has delivered 4,000 babies over the years; some politicians kiss babies, this one brings actually them into the world.) But he is never going to be president. That at least will free him up to go on being authentic, a quality in short supply among our pols.

So what’s the takeaway from CPAC 2010? Only this: It’s going to be messy between now and November, but conservatives are, for better or worse, fired up and ready to go. Funny—the phrase sounds vaguely familiar. Where can I have heard it before?







Rep. Ron Paul Surprise Winner Of CPAC Presidential Straw Poll



U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a stalwart foe of government spending, won a blowout victory Saturday in the annual Conservative Political Action Conference presidential straw poll.

With participants naming "reducing the size of federal government" as their top issue, the 74-year old libertarian hero captured 31 percent of the 2,400 votes cast in the annual contest, usually seen as a barometer of how the GOP's conservative wing regards their potential presidential candidates.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney finished second with 22 percent of the vote, ending a three-year winning streak at CPAC. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin finished third with 7 percent of the vote, followed by Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty at 6 percent and Indiana Rep. Mike Pence at 5 percent.

They were followed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who tied at 4 percent. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, South Dakota Sen. John Thune and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour rounded out the results.

Five percent of participants voted for "Other" and 6 percent was undecided.

The announcement of Paul's win, a surprise victory unlikely to have a major impact on the 2012 presidential contest, drew a volley of loud boos from the CPAC audience.

That discontent could be seen in the poll results: A majority of participants said they wished the Republican Party had a better field of candidates to choose from.

But Paul's victory might be seen, in part, as a result of his support among anti-establishment Tea Party activists -- who turned out in force at this year's conference and expressed some frustration with the Republican Party.

Reflecting the college atmosphere of the annual event, young people dominated the voting: 54 percent of participants were between the ages of 18 and 25.

The poll also contained a bit of bad news for Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who made an under-the-radar appearance at CPAC late Friday.

Participants were asked to rate their opinions of several top political figures, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner, both of whom received a majority favorable rating.

But Steele was the only Republican to garner an upside-down rating, with 44 percent giving him an unfavorable rating and 42 percent rating him favorably.

The three-day meeting Saturday that has featured speeches by Republican leaders, training sessions for local political activists and a renewed purpose to stand firm behind their principles heading into the midterm elections.


Sources: The Daily Beast, CNN, CPAC, Politico, Youtube

Mitt Romney Gets Fired Up At 2010 CPAC! Scott Brown Introduces

Mitt Romney's New Groove Debuts At CPAC


Meet the new Mitt, same as the old Mitt. The first of the 2012 presidential contenders to speak at CPAC, Mitt Romney just finished a fiery, sound bitey, (red) meaty stump speech that should erase the remaining doubts from anyone's mind that he's running for president in two years.

Romney got a huge ovation when he took the stage this afternoon. That's no surprise -- Romney "gets" CPAC, having won the vaunted presidential straw poll at the conference three times in a row. The crowd welcomed Romney, and he made it clear he was happy to see them, too.

"It's good to be back with you," he said to cheers. "I love to be back at CPAC."

Romney then launched into a speech that would be at home on the stump in Iowa or New Hampsire (and probably will be). Just before he took the stage, Democratic pollster PPP released a new poll showing Romney within two points of President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 matchup. Obama led Romney in the poll 45-43.

Romney seemed ready to take on Obama, addressing the crowd like he was already the GOP nominee.

"President Obama instituted the most anti-growth, anti-investment, anti-jobs measures we've seen in our lifetimes," he said. "He called his agenda ambitious. I call it reckless."

To contrast himself with the "big government" Obama, Romney took the tack we've seen in the past, embracing his past in corporate America as evidence that he can turn thing around in America faster and better than Obama. Romney compared corporate titans like Sam Walton, Steve Jobs and even Richard Branson to the founding fathers, claiming each had put his mark on the company he founded, as the founders of the United States did in early America.

"People shape businesses," he said. "People shape countries. America reflects the values of the people who first landed here, those who founded the nation, those who won our freedom, and those who made America the leader of the world."

Most of what he had to say was pure conservative red meat -- calls for strong national security, lower taxes and "fiscal responsibility." But Romney also mentioned Obama's swipes at the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address, a moment that may have put him at odds with his audience.

"The President found it inexplicable that the first amendment right of free speech should be guaranteed not just to labor union corporations and media corporations, but equally to all corporations, big and small," Romney said. "When it was all over, I think most Americans felt as I did: his noisy critique and bombast did not register as clear and convincingly as Justice Alito's silent lips forming these words: 'Not true!'"

But polls show that most Americans -- especially independents -- actually agree with Obama's take on the Citizens United ruling instead of Romney's take. The moment provided an interesting insight into the struggles politicians like Romney have at CPAC this year. On the one hand, he has to reach out to the classic main line conservative base that CPAC has hosted for years -- the businesspeople and social conservatives that have been the core of this gathering for years. On the other, Romney has to be careful not to raise the hackles of the Tea Partiers, most of whom proclaim themselves to be independent and are quick to attack establishment Republicans who don't pay attention.

Overall, though, Romney's speech was the kind of sound bite-heavy address we're all likely to hear a lot more of come late 2011. It's time to get ready, Romney seemed to say to his CPAC base, campaign 2012 starts now.


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Sources: CPAC, TPM, Youtube, Google Maps

Liz & Dick Cheney At CPAC: "Obama Is A One-Term President" (Videos)

Dick Cheney Surprises CPAC; Liz Cheney Attacks Obama's Terrorism Policies


Former Vice President Dick Cheney made a surprise appearance Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to pay homage to the movement and declare that Barack Obama will be a “one-term president.”

Cheney came up on stage after a speech by his daughter Liz, who hammered Obama’s policies on terrorism and laid blame on administration officials for the attempted Christmas Day bombing.

The room exploded with excitement for the former vice president, who was greeted with cheers of “run, Dick, run!”

“A welcome like that is almost enough to make me want to run for office again — but I’m not gonna do it,” he said.

Cheney made clear that he has passed the torch to his daughter, of whom he said he is “enormously proud.”

“She said I could come with her, but that I had to be arm candy,” the former vice president joked.

Cheney said that he is excited for the opportunities this November’s elections present for conservatives, especially for the younger generation to step up and take control of the movement.

“The sky is the limit here. I think 2010 will be a phenomenal year. And I think Barack Obama is a one-term president,” he said.

“The highlights of my years in public office have been my opportunities to come to CPAC,” Cheney said to the conference attendees. “Let me thank you for all the energy and time and effort you’ve dedicated to our common cause.”

“It’s a remarkable time to be an American and a remarkable time to be a conservative,” he concluded. “Good luck.”

Sources: Politico, Right Scoop

GOP Remains Focused On Winning Elections & Fundraising

Tea leaves: Republican Establishment Still Rules



The widely anticipated civil war within the Republican Party is off to a decidedly dull start.

Defying predictions from last year, early evidence suggests that party leaders and even most grass-roots activists are more interested in winning elections than in ideological bloodletting.

A spate of recent developments points to two conclusions about the modern Republican Party that were in doubt as recently as a few months ago.

The first is that for all the talk about tea party insurgents and fulminating radio and cable commentators taking over, the GOP remains above all an establishment party.

GOP leaders easily swatted down a proposed “purity test” for candidates at last week’s Republican National Committee meeting — an indication that party officials are no more willing to turn over the keys to right-wing activists now than they were during the Bush years.

In Illinois, Rep. Mark Kirk is hardly a conservative heartthrob — and some activists are openly contemptuous of what they perceive as his moderation — but he easily won the Republican Senate primary there Tuesday night, against a more conservative, underfunded opponent, in part because he is seen as having the best chance to capture President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat.

Recent elections also suggest a second trend: It may not be all that hard in a favorable political environment for skilled Republicans to bridge or blur the ideological divide between the conservative activists who dominate the party and the more moderate swing voters whom candidates need to win office.

Scott Brown has become the toast of Republicans nationally by winning Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in Massachusetts even though he supports abortion rights. Conversely, Republican Bob McDonnell defied predictions that he was too far to the right to attract moderate voters to win a landslide in the Virginia governor’s race.

Much about recent events reflects basic politics: Smart politicians have always calibrated their ideological profile to fit local circumstances.

But after conservative activists chased liberal Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava out of a special election in New York’s 23rd District last fall, some worried that activists were pushing the party so far to the right that it would be unable to compete nationally.

Earlier last year, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs crowed that Rush Limbaugh was the real leader of the Republican Party.

So far, though, it seems clear that Republicans who deviate from party orthodoxy or downplay social issues can be successful as long as they are not egregiously out of step with the base and are savvy enough to harness populist anger at Washington to their benefit.

“This is a reform impulse,” former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove said of the anti-Washington, anti-Obama mood that has fueled the tea parties. “Our candidates have to be willing to talk about spending and deficits and the expansion of government in people’s lives in a way that people find compelling and authentic.”

Former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican who has regularly urged his party to be more open to moderates, said Republicans like McDonnell and Brown have smartly tapped into populist outrage by “seeing it as an opportunity.”

“Wide-awake leaders don’t need to be threatened by the tea parties,” Davis said, adding: “It’s easier to include coalitions when you don’t have to govern.”

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“As a general rule, I think the tea party folks are not going to be that huge a problem for Republicans,” agreed longtime political analyst Charlie Cook. “They can pull in a bunch of disaffected people that haven’t been involved in politics and in most cases can be channeled in constructive ways.”

Few party officials, of course, want to sound critical of the tea party activists or Limbaugh’s listeners, for fear of offending the very voters they need to keep winning. But strategists say the big-tent approach of their recent successful candidates is offering the way forward.

“It’s becoming clear that the calculus for winning in this environment has much more to do with understanding the underlying economic anxiety of the entire electorate, versus just focusing on the anger of one sliver of it,” said Republican consultant Kevin Madden.

It was tea party passions that helped seed Brown’s upset in Massachusetts. Conservative activist money and volunteers flowed from across the country into the Bay State.

But Brown himself was a party regular, not an insurgent, and his campaign was guided from the beginning by the veteran political strategists who helped elect Mitt Romney governor and who ran his presidential campaign. These Romney hands were quietly aided by the money and strategic guidance of the National Republican Senatorial Committee as well as by top-notch, out-of-state pollsters and consultants.

Many activists may be unaware of what a mainstream political figure Brown is. Even now, weeks after his election, conservatives are forwarding a 1½-minute video under the subject line “WOW! Powerful! Massachusetts Scott Brown Commercial.” It has gotten more than 1.4 million views.

It depicts Brown as a modern-day freedom fighter, comparing him to a revolutionary warrior and Democratic Washington to the British crown, with phrases such as “liberty” and “tyranny” sprinkled about and images of last fall’s tea party march in Washington in the finale.

But the ads that actually lifted Brown to victory were conventional, though smartly crafted, spots portraying him as a truck-driving Everyman — not a lamp-carrying colonist. In fact, it wasn’t Paul Revere but, rather, Democrat John F. Kennedy whom Brown was likened to in one of his commercials. In addition to the now-famous one of him driving his black GMC, another ad showed him working the triple deckers in gritty South Boston. The message was that he was safe for Democrats — or those who were raised as Democrats — to support, not that he wanted to start another revolution.

In Virginia, McDonnell also enjoyed great enthusiasm from conservative activists in his gubernatorial bid. And, unlike Brown, he was a genuine ideologue, having made his name in the state Legislature as a social conservative.

But McDonnell’s campaign was more Tom Davis than it was Pat Robertson, as the graduate of the latter’s law school ran straight toward the center with a campaign stressing jobs, education and transportation.

At times, especially when he was downstate, McDonnell did tie his Democratic opponent to a federal government that the Republican depicted as encroaching on the authority of the states. But the rhetorical bones thrown out for the benefit of the tea partiers were not what was in the carefully tested ads that blanketed Northern Virginia, dominated by more moderate voters, in which the candidate stressed his local upbringing.

There was grumbling at times from Christian conservatives that McDonnell was ignoring their issues, but after losing consecutive governor’s races and both Senate seats, the right wing was more hungry for a win than agitated that one of its own wasn’t railing against abortion and gay marriage.

In Illinois, Kirk, a moderate congressman from Chicago’s North Shore suburbs, cruised to victory Tuesday against the more conservative Patrick Hughes. Like Brown a cultural moderate, Kirk had taken flak from tea party activists over his vote in favor of cap-and-trade legislation on carbon emissions and others on the right over his support for abortion rights.

But on most fiscal and national security issues, Kirk is in the party’s mainstream, and he dispatched the underfunded Hughes by 37 percent.

And in the Brown model, Kirk has already begun a general election campaign that both appeals to local sensibilities (decrying the state’s rampant corruption and one-party control) and reaches conservatives (hitting Democrats on spending).

That there is no conservative coup taking place within the GOP was also made clear as the national party met in Hawaii last week. A much-discussed “purity resolution” that would have barred party support and funding for candidates who didn’t meet an issue test wasn’t brought up for a vote. In fact, before the general session even began, the state party chairmen unanimously passed a resolution expressing their opposition to such an idea.

What was ultimately approved by the committee was a toothless measure that won’t prevent party officials from supporting moderate candidates.

“Those people want to win elections and they know it’s about addition, not subtraction,” said Rove of the Republican National Committee vote.

The one race where there is at least a perceived threat from the tea party crowd toward the establishment is the Florida GOP Senate primary.

But despite how the race has been framed, Marco Rubio, who is running against Gov. Charlie Crist, is hardly a wild-eyed activist. Rubio is a former state House speaker and Jeb Bush protégé whose donors include such party establishment types as Rove and whose advisers include longtime national strategists such Todd Harris and Heath Thompson.

Further, Crist’s problems aren’t merely ideological. Yes, he’s paying a price for having supported the stimulus package. But he’s also hurt himself more deeply by seeming to nakedly play to the political mood of the moment, positioning himself to the center when that seems wise and shifting right when threatened by his own party.

As notable, if less commented upon, as the Florida match is the Pennsylvania Senate contest.

Former Rep. Pat Toomey, a past Club for Growth president who was once thought unelectable by his own party, has moderated himself slightly (he backed the confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor) and is hammering Sen. Arlen Specter on fiscal issues.

It’s still early, and Specter may lose his own primary, but Toomey is enjoying a 14-point lead, according to a new poll — seeming to prove that if they run disciplined campaigns that home in on issues that voters are concerned with, the conditions could be such that even candidates to the right of their state’s mainstream have a chance to win.






GOP Cash Provides 2012 Clues


The battle for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination quietly began last year — maybe not for the candidates, but for their political groups.

Sarah Palin’s committee paid more than $50,000 for policy advice in the second half of 2009, during which Tim Pawlenty’s and Mike Huckabee’s spent nearly $97,000 combined on fundraising lists. Newt Gingrich’s dropped $585,000 to jet him across the country. Mitt Romney’s doled out $17,500 to New Hampshire pols and causes.

The stated mission of the committees was to boost Republican candidates, rebuild the party and advance conservative policies. But an examination of recently filed finance reports covering the second half of 2009 shows that the groups also are serving to boost their leaders’ viability as White House hopefuls and build political operations that could launch their runs.

Palin’s political action committee paid $21,000 to Kim Daniels, a Maryland lawyer who is an expert on health care “rights of conscience,” for domestic policy advice, and an additional $30,000 to the lobbying and consulting firm of Randy Scheunemann for foreign policy advice. The two helped the former Alaska governor craft a paid speech in Hong Kong in September, which was interpreted as an effort to develop a more polished public policy profile.

In the final six months of last year, the PACs founded by Pawlenty and Huckabee — a governor and a former governor who have been criticized for their lack of national fundraising network — paid $52,000 and $45,000, respectively, to rent or buy fundraising lists.

Meanwhile, Gingrich’s committee spent hundreds of thousands on charter flights to get the former House speaker to speaking engagements across the country.

And the network of PACs led by Romney, the former Massachusetts governor whose presidential ambitions hinge largely on his ability to win New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary, in 2009 contributed $17,500 to candidates and committees in the Granite State.

Jason Torchinsky, a Republican campaign finance lawyer, said that almost anyone thinking seriously about running for president in 2012 should have already started some form of political nonprofit.

“Over the last 20 years, this has become the pattern for people thinking about running for president,” said Torchinsky. “It certainly makes things easier if they decide to become a candidate later this year or early next year, because they will have built a donor list and relationships with local officials and party activists, as well as consultants.”

Between July 1 and the beginning of this year, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, Romney’s PAC (Free and Strong America) brought in more than $1.6 million, Palin’s (Sarah PAC) raised nearly $1.4 million, Huckabee’s (Huck PAC) raised $519,000 and Pawlenty’s (Freedom First) raked in nearly $1.3 million, though it’s only been up and running for three months.

But according to a report filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Gingrich’s group, American Solutions for Winning the Future, lapped them all, raising $6.4 million in the second half of the year.

As a so-called 527 organization, named for the section of the IRS code under which it’s established, American Solutions can accept unlimited donations from individuals and corporations, but is barred from contributing to candidates.

The others’ groups are leadership PACs, which are limited to accepting maximum donations of $5,000 per-person-per-year, and can contribute to candidates and committees. Yet the PACs in question contributed a combined total of only $124,000 from their federal accounts in the second half of 2009 — less than 3 percent of what they raised in that time and about the same amount that they spent on catering.

To be sure, the groups helped spur the GOP in ways other than direct contributions, but those contributions pale in comparison to their collective spending on fundraising ($4.6 million), consultants ($1.2 million) or even travel ($807,000).

All the prospective 2012-ers and their groups’ representatives insist their groups are focused on raising money to boost Republicans headed into the 2010 midterms.

“We’re obviously very pleased with the support we received last quarter, and we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to elect a lot of conservative candidates this fall,” said Alex Conant, a former Republican National Committee spokesman now working for Pawlenty’s PAC. “Beyond that, who knows what will happen.”

Conant’s eponymous consulting firm was paid $10,000 by Pawlenty’s PAC in the last three months of 2009, making him one of a handful of savvy young Washington operatives retained by the PAC in its few short months of operation. Others include former Bush White House political director Sara Taylor, former Republican Governors Association director Phil Musser, Web gurus Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn and campaign finance lawyer Michael Toner.

Their firms were paid a combined $34,000 by the PAC, its FEC report shows.

Pawlenty’s PAC operation remains light, skewing toward consultants, and retaining only five full-time employees. Huckabee’s, on the other hand, paid a few consultants, but reported paying six employees’ salaries (and benefits), the largest of which went to his daughter.

The biggest operations were maintained by Gingrich’s group, which in the second half of 2009, paid $895,000 to 21 employees and an additional $539,000 to 13 consultants, and Romney’s, which paid $154,000 to eight employees and $390,000 to 11 consultants.

Palin did not pay a single full-time employee salary or benefit, relying instead on a small group of Alaska-based consultants and a few Washington hands.

Campaign finance and tax laws prohibit politicians from using their leadership PACs or 527s to directly fund their own campaigns. Otherwise, though, there are few restrictions on how leadership PACs and 527s can spend their cash, and Sarah PAC’s spending, in particular, occasionally blurred the line between her political and personal lives.

On June 5, for example, the PAC paid $260 for food and drink at Yankee Stadium when Palin and her husband, Todd, took in a ballgame with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his wife Judith.

The PAC also paid Harper Collins, publisher of Palin’s best-selling memoir “Going Rogue,” $68,000 for books to be sent to donors and to subsidize portions of her book tour, which occasionally felt more like a campaign swing, including travel costs for her personal photographer, who also was paid $14,200 directly by the PAC.


Sources: Politico, MSNBC

Tea Party Movement Turns Into Financial Boon!...Grassroots Political Power Brokers

Tea Parties emerge as revenue stream



Tapping into the deep reservoir of anger on the right at President Barack Obama and Congress has turned out to be a financial boon to a diverse collection of tea party-affiliated political groups and candidates soliciting donations and raising money from the sale of T-shirts, books and paraphernalia.

The tea party brand has proved to be a potent source of revenue for new for-profit companies funding — among other things — an upcoming convention keynoted by Sarah Palin, for established national non-profit groups soliciting small donations and for political action committees and long-shot candidates raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to overcome sometimes long electoral odds.

And it’s spawned a host of competing initiatives to capitalize on the willingness of conservative activists to put their money where their politics are, even during tough economic times.

A combination of newly engaged small donors and already engaged ones redirecting their contributions are the main source of the money, according to movement organizers in Washington and across the country, who predict that if tea party donors unite behind a group or cluster of groups, they could emerge as a force as well-financed as the liberal juggernaut MoveOn.org.

But the fundraising efforts have also prompted grumbling about the monetization of a local grass-roots movement and raised concerns about whether the money is being used to advance the cause of the activists who burst onto the national scene last summer with marches and town hall protests around the country.

The debate over fundraising reflects the tensions of a movement whose internal stresses have raised concerns on the right about its ability to become a factor in the 2010 elections. Already, there are charges and countercharges that the money that has been raised has not been used effectively to advance the small-government, limited taxation ideals at the heart of the tea party movement.

“There are a lot of questions about money and where all the money has gone,” said Erick Erickson, editor of the influential conservative blog RedState.com, which has emerged as both chronicler of — and guide for — the tea party movement.

Conservative bloggers and activists have at times accused some tea party organizers of poor budgeting, wasting money on flashy initiatives like cross-country bus tours that critics say don’t do much to advance the cause, or — worse — using cash raised from activists to pad their groups’ coffers or their own wallets.

“The biggest problem I have is that there are a bunch of hacks out there,” said Erickson, who has been traveling the country advising conservative groups and big donors on strategies for feeding and channeling the grass-roots energy behind the tea party movement. He said “multimillion-dollar donors” have largely refrained from supporting many of the tea party-affiliated groups because they’re waiting for signs of which will be able to effectively advance the movement.

In the meantime, though, small-dollar donations from the movement’s grass-roots activists have emerged as a significant funding stream that could be key for the tea party to advance from merely staging protests to shaping elections, according to Eric Odom, an early tea party organizer who has founded a handful of tea party-related groups.

“If you take the million people who turned out on April 15 [at Tax Day Tea Parties around the country], and you can get even half of those to contribute $100, that’s pretty significant and that’s what we’re working on,” said Odom, who helped organize the April rallies.

This month, Odom unveiled a new political action committee called Liberty First PAC to raise money from tea party activists to fund congressional challengers embodying the movement’s principles. Though the PAC has only raised $15,000, he says it’s received pledges for $100,000. “Our next $400,000 is within reach, and after that, it should take care of itself,” he predicted.

Odom conceded, though, that a for-profit company he co-owns called American Liberty Alliance burned through the $30,000 it raised — from donors and by selling Web ads — to fund a monthlong candidate-backing cross-country bus tour before it could pay a couple of the people who helped pull it off, though he says the payments weren’t guaranteed.

The California-based political action committee Our Country Deserves Better PAC-TeaPartyExpress.org has raised big bucks — and hackles — for its own pair of bus tours on the so-called Tea Party Express, whose riders participated in tea party rallies in towns along its cross-country routes.

The PAC sought $250,000 in donations from grass-roots activists to fund a bus tour that started in San Diego in October and ended this month in Orlando. The PAC, which is planning another pair of tours in 2010, reported to the Federal Election Commission that from the beginning of the year through the end of June (the most recent figures available), it raised $585,000 and paid $235,000 to PAC officials, the consulting firm that runs the PAC, and the activists who have traveled on the Express.

The PAC’s coordinator, Joe Wierzbicki, said its goal “ is to support conservative candidates for Congress in 2010 and a conservative presidential candidate in 2012.” A good portion of its money went to produce ads supporting Republican campaigns, including Jim Tedisco’s narrow loss in the special election for a western New York congressional seat, and opposing Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In all, the PAC this year spent $327,000 on independent expenditures http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/com_supopp/C00454074/ through the end of June.

In two closely watched battles between Republican moderates and conservative challengers, small donors have played a major role. Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate in a New York special congressional election, received most of the more than $265,000 he raised for his unsuccessful campaign from outside his upstate New York district. And Marco Rubio, who is trailing Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in a battle for the GOP nomination.html for the Senate, raised $315,000 of the $1 million in contributions he reported in the last quarter from small, out-of-state donations.

Wierzbicki’s PAC has come under heavy fire from activists who have charged it alternately with trying to co-opt the movement for partisan political purposes and “using the name tea party to put money in his own pockets.”

Tea Party Nation, a for-profit company that runs a social networking website for activists and is now selling tickets — at $560 a pop — to what it’s billing as the “First National Tea Party Convention,” has also come under fire from activists. According to the organization’s website, the planned three-day convention in February is “aimed at bringing the Tea Party Movement leaders together from around the nation for the purpose of networking and supporting the movements' multiple organizations principal goal

The registration fee doesn’t include lodging at Nashville’s sprawling Gaylord Opryland Hotel, where the convention is being held. But it does include access to scheduled speeches by tea party heroes Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Palin, whose speaking fee (reported to be in the six figures) was paid by convention organizers.

“If this were a perfect world, we wouldn’t charge anybody, but to put on an event like this, there are expenses that have to be covered,” said Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips. He explained that his group is hoping to turn a profit from the event so that it can “funnel money back into conservative causes” through a 527 group it plans to set up to get involved in campaigns.

“This is the source of a lot of disagreement within the tea party movement, where a lot of people say money is a bad thing. But the simple fact of the matter is that you are not going to get candidates elected without money,” he said.

“The tea party movement is a grass-roots movement; it’s not a business,” countered Anthony Shreeve, an East Tennessee local tea party organizer who resigned from the convention’s steering committee after a disagreement over finances. “Most tea party activists won’t be there because they can’t afford it.”

Tea Party Nation’s website sells ads such as the one for a book called “Tea Party Revival: The Conscience of a Conservative Reborn,” which bills itself as “an essential guide” to the movement, and also hawks Tee-shirts emblazoned with “Got Tea?”

The Tea Party Express’s online store site bears only a message explaining that merchandise “was backordered due to the tremendous amount of support. Not to worry. ... you will be receiving your items soon.” And a conservative Georgia-based company called Patriot Depot has offered up a wide array of movement paraphernalia, including a T.E.A. ("Taxed Enough Already") yard sign ($19.95) and personalized tea bags it promised to send to Congress before the April 15 tax deadline.

Then there are the more established — and well-funded — Washington-based conservative groups that have gotten most of their cash from big donors, but in recent months, as they’ve helped facilitate and organize aspects of the tea party movement, have quietly competed to add grass-roots activists to their member and donor rolls.

Many grass-roots party activists, whose local groups by and large are financed by $5 and $10 donations collected in hats passed in living rooms and coffee shops weekly around the country, resent the fundraising solicitations from national groups, said Glenn Gallas, a Hot Springs, Ark., tea party organizer.

“You just become another name on their e-mail list to ask for money from,” he said.

Nonetheless, FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Limited Government — among the Washington groups most involved in offering their organizational services to local Tea Party activists — all say they’ve seen major spikes in membership and small donations.

It’s impossible to gauge how much of those groups’ funding comes from the gras-sroots versus huge individual or corporate donations, since the groups aren’t subject to mandatory disclosure rules. But what is known of their finances — for example, that most of Americans for Limited Government’s $4 million budget comes from large donors including New York real estate magnate Howard Rich, while Americans for Prosperity is funded in part by interests affiliated with its founder manufacturing tycoon David Koch — have yielded charges from the left that the groups are drumming up fake grass-roots’ opposition to Democratic initiatives.

Adam Brandon, spokesman for FreedomWorks, a non-profit chaired by former House Republican Leader Dick Armey, said the group is seeing “just a huge number (of grass-roots tea party activists) giving” since it got involved in the movement. It has helped facilitate some of the seminal events in the movement, including the massive Sept. 12 “Taxpayer March on Washington.”

But another Washington group that co-sponsored that march and other tea party activities, the National Taxpayers Union, has not seen its donor rolls blossom during its involvement in the movement, according to spokesman Pete Sepp.

“What we were trying to do in activating these folks was first to get them involved and then, hopefully, seek their financial support,” said Sepp. “One would think ‘gosh you’re crazy for not hitting them up for money right away,’ but we really wanted to see how we could cultivate grass-roots contacts for the long term to establish an ongoing presence in their own communities, rather than suddenly put these people on donor rolls and hit them up mercilessly,” he said.

“A lot of these folks are not in a great financial position to begin with. It’s one of the reasons that they’re out protesting is because they’re feeling the pain,” he said, adding that too much of an emphasis on raising money “could potentially harm the movement, because it’s a premature national initiative that doesn’t have the support of the majority of we the people.”


Sources: Politico, C-Span, Youtube