Apparently, there is another of these freak-show Republican debates tonight. The best part is that CNN is teaming up with the Tea Party Express to co-sponsor the thing. Nothing like legitimizing a scam organization. Way to go CNN.
The Sacramento-based GOP political consulting firm Russo Marsh and Rogers founded the Tea Party Express through its political action committee Our Country Deserves Better (OCDB) in the summer of 2009. Russo Marsh and Rogers is a campaign consultancy specializing in promoting conservative candidates and causes. Sal Russo of Russo Marsh and Rogers serves as the chief strategist for Tea Party Express. Russo worked on a range of establishment Republican campaigns going back three decades. He was an aide to Ronald Reagan when Reagan was governor of California. Russo has also worked for Orrin Hatch, Jack Kemp, and George Pataki. Tea Party Express co-founder Howard Kaloogian is a former California state lawmaker and onetime congressional candidate whose campaign was marred with controversy when a picture posted on his website of a quiet-looking street scene as “proof” that the situation in Iraq was far safer than the media was reporting was revealed in the media to have actually been taken in Turkey…
…Radio host Mark Williams, the former chairman of the Tea Party Express, was widely denounced in the summer of 2010 for writing a letter in praise of slavery in the voice of “colored people” on his blog. He was forced to resign his Tea Party Express spokesperson position.
A December 28, 2009 article in Talking Points Memo detailed that OCDB directed almost three-quarters of all its funding to the Republican-affiliated political consulting firm that created the PAC in the first place. According to FEC filings, from July through November 2009, OCDB spent around $1.33 million, and of that sum, $857,122 went to the consulting firm Russo, Marsh, and Rogers. OCDB was founded by Sal Russo of the Russo, Marsh, and Rogers.
In January 2011, OpenSecrets.org reported that a dead woman had donated thousands of dollars to the Tea Party Express’ political action committee.
All of the Republican debates are unwatchable hatefests, but this one ought to be among the worst of this election cycle. Who will stand up to the Tea Party at a fake Tea Party event? I think I’ll follow it on Twitter. It’s much less infuriating that way.
