Tea Party Leaders Care Only About Money

Roger Ailes had the brilliant idea that a highly partisan conservative infotainment network would be a financial boom. The next stage in the infotainment evolution is conservative celebrities pretending to be political activists that care about the betterment of America. Don't believe me? Fox News host Glenn Beck admitted as much to Forbes. Journalist Lacey Rose asked Beck his feeling about politics.

"I could give a flying crap about the political process," Beck said.

The Fox News crying machine informed Rose that is company Mercury Radio Arts strickly a for-profit venture.

"We're an entertainment company," Beck told Rose.

A New York Magazine article on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement details the money to be made off of angry and poorly informed activists. A truly dedicated public servant would have stayed on as Governor of Alaska. Sarah Palin is not that person. Palin was received an offer for a reality show and a book deal. Palin decided to resign.

Palin gave a truly bizarre and incoherent speech. The published transcript of Palin's speech has misuse of capitalization and poor sentence structuring. Example:

We aggressively and responsibly develop our resources because they were created to be used to better our world... to HELP people... and we protect the environment and Alaskans (the resource owners) foremost with our policies.

Palin will never get hired as a speechwriter. However, her celebrity has helped her earn $12 million, during the past 12 month. For that kind of money, it is easy to see why Palin left her $125,000-a-year job as Governor.

Palin bashed Obama for his lack of executive experience. Palin resigned as Governor in her first term. A politician serious about governing and becoming president would not have done what Palin did. Palin knows she is worth more as a brand than in public office.

An amazing part of the Palin article of big-name conservatives counting money, after a Tea Party rally.

After the speech, Sal Russo, a former Ronald Reagan aide and conservative operative whose PAC runs the Tea Party Express, invited me onto the tea-party bus. The coach was luxuriously appointed, with soft carpeting, mood lighting, and mirrored walls. A large flat-screen hanging from the ceiling was tuned to Fox News. We eased into a plush leather couch next to some of the conservative celebrities who travel along with the tour. A young woman named Bethany Owens was sitting at a small table, pulling bills from a leather satchel. The 20-year-old daughter of black conservative entrepreneurs William and Selena Owens, Bethany had spent the morning at her parents’ booth selling books and CDs, like her mother’s title The Power Within a Conservative Woman ($9.95) and her dad’s motivational CD Answers Beyond the Rhetoric ($19.95). Bethany began stacking up bills, doling them out like a Vegas dealer.

“One hundred, two hundred, three, four, five hundred,” she counted. “Ugh! I gotta start over.”

“Five, six, seven, eight, nine hundred. Okay, that’s $3,300,” she said, piling bills into neat rows.

“Are there corn dogs here, somebody?” yelled Melanie Morgan, a blonde conservative talk-radio host sitting nearby. Just then, Russo informed her that he’d heard Palin had agreed to speak alongside Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh at Morgan’s upcoming charity event for the troops, which would mean more care packages. “Oh my God! This is fabulous. Sal, brilliant. I could cry I’m so happy,” she said. “That’s gonna be so many hundreds of thousands of dollars more.”

Charge angry people to tell them what they want to hear. As a business model it is brilliant. The good news is the Tea Party movement will fail because it is built on xenophobia and greed. The message will ultimately fail. The Tea Party crowd that do get elected will ultimately crash and burn. We have already seen how Marco Rubio has used his Republican Party of Florida credit card. You can't preach fiscal conservatism when you are looking to make a buck off people.