Conservatism riddled with scams

>>> as the republican party and the conservative movement try to figure out who they are in the wake of this year's elections and who is in charge, right, on the conservative cable news network, the fox news channel , it is reported now that the two political analysts moses closely associated with not just wanting mitt romney to win the presidential election , but saying mitt romney would win the presidential election , those two analysts have been benched by cable executives. one of them is karl rove , who famously on election night tried to convince fox news-watching americans that mitt romney had not really lost ohio. that could not be. not when he, karl rove , had spent $390 million raised from conservative zillion airs to make sure that never happened. same goes for this guy. his name is dick morris . he not only said repeatedly and emphatically that mitt romney would win the election, he was the guy who said mitt romney would definitely win in a landslide. he has apparently been benched at fox news as well. that does not mean, however, that dick morris is taking a break. oh, no. at dickmorris.com today, you can learn about how president obama is moving forward on gun control . which given the politics around gun control would be kind of amazing if it were happening, right? but of course it is not happening. i mean dick morris says it is happening, but that is no reason to believe a thing is happening in this sane, sane world. complicating their on-arian list roles for the fox news channel , most mr. rove and mr. morris were not just operating as observers on the election or commentate owners the election, they were both active participants in this election. both men had their own superpacs invested in the outcome of the election. media matters took a look at the fec filings for mr. morris's superpac that were released last week, and they found something strange. check out dick morris 's website again. if you get past the gun control nonsense, if you click through to dickmorris.com/advertisingand information, you can see there if you would like to send e-mails to the rarefied strata of america who are people who believe things that dick morris says, you can pay to newsmax .com between $10 and $35 for each thousand names to get access to and use the dick morris e-mail distribution list . it's got about a half million people on the list. the minimum order they say is the full list, which means it's wicked expensive to e-mail dick morris fans with whatever it is you want to e-mail them about. but if you look at the fec filings for dick morris 's superpac that he was operating, the two largest expenditures in the weeks leading up to the election were a credit card processing company that was handling the logistics of people who wanted to give him money, and also newsmax .com, where you can rent dick morris 's e- mail list . and that's where he spent his money marked as fundraising. so based on those reports to the fec in terms of what he was spending his money on, the folks at media matters surmise that a significant proportion of the superpac's money likely went to renting dick morris 's own e- mail list , which is operated by newsmax media . so your money in other words goes to dick morris who apparently then pays it to newsmax to send e-mails, and then newsmax maybe just pays it back to dick morris to pay for the e-mail addresses to which they just sent all of his e-mails. nice work if you can get it, right? what these financial reports seem to indicate that s that donations to dick morris 's superpac substantially end up just going to dick morris , which he presumably uses to send more e-mails to get more money, which goes to dick morris . this is based on media meters' review of these fec reports from the end of the last election. and the superpac has been around for the last couple of years. maybe it doesn't always work like this. maybe it's not always a scam. but this scammy looking arrangement for the period right before the presidential election is coming to light right on the heels of a high profile eyebrow-raising sudden and unexpected resignation at another conservative fundraising juggernaut, freedom works . the dick armey resignation seemed strange from the start when mother jones first broke the story a week ago. first of all, there was dick armey 's weird resignation letter that got leaked demanding that his name and likeness not be used in any freedom works materials. subsequent to that came the news that mr. armey had arranged for an $8 million golden parachute for himself provided by an influential republican fundraiser, which did not seem very grassrootsy at all for a supposedly grassroots group. he gets $8 million once he leaves. subsequent to that emerged the details or at least the allegation of the relatively scammy reason that mr. armey left the group. politico.com reporting that the other recognizable guy at freedomworks besides dick armey , a guy named matt kibbie had allegedly used freedomworks staff and resources to wray his book, even though all the profits from the book were just going to him, going to matt kibbie. anybody donating to freedomworks , anybody donating to freedomworks was effectively paying for the staff time and the resources to produce a project that just personally profited one of the people who work there's. a scam. it's like the newt gingrich direct mail scam, right, where newt gingrich would give businesses fake awards, where what you won was the opportunity to give $5,000 to newt gingrich to meet him? also, you would get a souvenir gavel. congratulations to you. where is your check for me? it's also like that scammy campaign where mike huckabee was appearing in the repeal obama care now ads. repeal it now. you go to their website, and what do you see? it's now or never, and a giant button at the bottom of the screen that you can click to help fund the battle. and what do they want you to do in terms of helping to fund the battle? they would prefer that you donate $2500 to join the chairman's circle, which is also, i'm not making this up, called the huckabee special. and that will, in their own words help keep mike huckabee on tv to repeal obama care. will having mike huckabee on tv repeal obama care? i'm checking with the constitution, but i don't think so. but mike huckabee would please like to stay on tv, if for no other reason than to keep asking for more of your money to help him stay on tv asking for more money. it is maybe inevitable that somebody is going to try to turn impotent political rage and ignorance into personal financial gain. it has been happening as long as there has been snake oil and hucksters, which is not the root word of mr. huckabee's name. i did check that. this isn't just some con man off the street. i mean mike huckabee , for whatever you think of him now, he came in second the last time the republicans nominated somebody for president. in the 2008 election, mike huckabee essentially came in second to john mccain . which is now the part where i tell you that the guy who came in second this year, the guy who came in second to mitt romney , where does he work now? he works at world net daily , which is admittedly hilarious, because it's a mad libs choose your own adjective. plug in muslim, guy, murder, communist and michelle and see what comes out. but in addition to being inadvertently hilarious, world net daily is now home to the runner-up from this last year's republican presidential nominating contest, and world net is also a scam. rick perlstein wrote a great piece that came out before the election in the baffler about how world net daily and dick morris 's pals at newsmax are essentially operating systems designed to feet the contact information for gullible and overexcited conservatives to people who can part them with their money. right? and if you are a person who has long been struck by and fascinated by how similar the conservative be afraid direct mail that asks for money looks to the kind of direct mail that tries to scam your grandmother out of her save remember fred thompson and the reverse mortgage thing? yeah. it is amazing to see. if you have been watching this over time is one of the amazing things about it is how persistent it is. it just doesn't go away. if you have any conservative sort of name for yourself, the odds are pretty good you're going to end up in some sort of scam designed to part gullible conservatives from their wallets. what might be new, though, that after this last election, at least some folks on the right appear to finally be seeing this as a problem for the american right.kristol, writing for the weekly standard says, quote, the conservative is in deep disarray, reading about some conservative organizations and republican campaigns these days, one is reminded of eric hoffer 's remark, every great cause begins as a movement,