Wingnut welfare’s new poster boy: How Chris McDaniel will be rewarded
And this is where wingnut welfare comes in. The Tea Party leaders will be “taken care of,” meaning that losers like McDaniel are probably already making deals to continue his “crusade” — just as so many other Tea party luminaries have done. Sarah Palin has taken the most glamorous course by becoming a reality TV and social media star but that probably isn’t a career path open to most Tea Party losers. McDaniel, however, comes out of talk radio so he may have the celebrity training to follow in her footsteps. For the moment, he’s just getting his all-important “list” together:
Mr. McDaniel made clear this week that he was not giving up the fight, dashing off fund-raising emails declaring Mississippi’s Republican Senate runoff “a sham, plain and simple,” and offering rewards to individuals who “provide evidence leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in voter fraud.”
“Thanks to illegal voting from liberal Democrats, my opponent stole last week’s runoff election,” he wrote.
Nothing fires up the Tea Party faithful like accusations of illegal voting, especially of the African-American kind. McDaniel has a built-in cause should he decide to accept it. But that’s not the only avenue for his comeback. Chris Chocola is a former congressman who left the government in frustration and now heads the Club for Growth, which not only backs economic extremists for office but is also spearheading some of the main legal challenges to the tattered remains of this nation’s campaign finance laws. Perhaps McDaniel could take over the leadership of the Tea Party “voter fraud” group True the Vote and in a Palin-like jujitsu move star in a reality TV series featuring God-fearing Real Americans traveling all over the country rooting out voter fraud in “urban” areas.
And one cannot overlook the Tea Party’s most audacious leader, former congressman Allen West who has collected millions doing absolutely nothing but sending out fundraising letters for his “Allen West Guardian Fund” (which is evidently tasked with guarding Allen West’s wallet). McDaniel is showing some flair for this sort of wingnut welfare scam already — his “reward” gambit is sure to end up gathering a fair amount of money from angry Tea Partyers without having a snowball’s chance in Mississippi of adding up to anything but profits for McDaniel.
One thing is for sure: Whether the disappointed Tea Partyers stay home in November or not, the Tea Party celebrities will be cashing in on donations from the faithful and collecting their Wingnut Welfare. As circus impresarios everywhere know, there’s a sucker born every minute.
Salon
7/8/14
Magnolia Tribune
