4/12/21
The Trump 2020 campaign ripped off its small donors last year by nudging them into authorizing repeat donations from their credit cards, according to The New York Times. Then the main Republican House campaign group followed up by brazenly threatening any small donor who wanted to just make a one-time donation. If you UNCHECK this box [for recurring donations], we will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR & sided with the Dems,” says the National Republican Congressional Committee’s donation page on WinRed, the key platform for conservative online fundraising. Also last week, conservatives who thought they were sending money to support Second Amendment gun rights found out they, too, had been ripped off. According to depositions made public at a National Rifle Association (NRA) bankruptcy hearing last week, NRA President Wayne LaPierre hid on a 108-foot yacht after school children died in mass shootings. The boat’s owner is tied to a fundraising firm paid $11.5 million by the NRA in 2019. LaPierre said he thought to himself: “Thank God I’m safe, nobody can get me here.” What hypocrisy for a man who raised hundreds of millions by telling conservatives to buy lots of guns to be safe. Despite an endless gun supply, he fled to sea for safety. He previously admitted to using his donors’ money to buy expensive suits.
At this point, the conservative movement has become a circus of grifters and con men. Former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) agrees. The best known Republicans on Capitol Hill today, Boehner writes in a new book, are not conservatives. Instead, the front rank of the party is filled by loudmouths willing to voice the wildest conspiracy theories. These pretend conservatives rake in money by being stars in what Boehner calls “Looneyville,” the echo chamber of right-wing radio hosts and even further right websites. In “On the House: A Washington Memoir,” Boehner said the conservative heritage of the Republican Party has been sunk by the power of “fawning right-wing media and outrage-driven fundraising.” The former Speaker’s description of the Tea Party class of 2010 is even more true of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), the best-known of what might be called the Trump/QAnon class of 2020. Boehner’s conclusion is that Republicans in Congress are now in the grips of “the crazy caucus,” a group he defines as encompassing “garden-variety whack jobs to insurrectionists.” The right-wing media that Boehner describes as controlling the GOP give Republicans no incentive to work with Biden and applauds them every time they obstruct him. When it comes to the GOP as a legitimate conservative, governing party, well, the party’s over.
thehill.com