If you want to get rich and aren't too particular how you do it, just go into right-wing fundraising. The base falls for it every time. From the Washington Post:
Out of the $37.5 million spent so far by the PACs of six major tea party organizations, less than $7 million has been devoted to directly helping candidates.
Three well-known groups--the Tea Party Patriots, the Tea Party Express and the Madison Project--have spent 5 percent or less of their money directly on election-related activity during this election cycle. Two other prominent tea party groups, the Senate Conservatives Fund and FreedomWorks, have devoted about 40 percent of their money to direct candidate support such as ads and yard signs.
I used to get countless emails from the Tea Party Express (alas, they no longer write or send me flowers) and every one of them was positively desperate to raise emergency cash on behalf of some besieged but plucky tea-partying candidate somewhere. Won't you dig deep today and help us defend freedom while striking a blow at Obama's savage socialist takeover? they would say, or something like that--always in bold, and always italicized. I often wondered who the poor saps were who responded with cash. Now I know.
The money rolls in from donors such as Arlin Ashmead, an 85-year-old alfalfa and hay farmer in Idaho, who wrote four checks to the Tea Party Express this year totaling $270 after receiving the group’s literature in the mail.
Notes the Post:
The Tea Party Express, a PAC run out of Sacramento by longtime Republican consultant Sal Russo, has paid Russo’s firm $2.75 million since the beginning of 2013, while donating just $45,000 to candidates and spending less than $162,000 on ads and bus tours supporting their election.
A little extrapolating here: of Mr. Ashmead's $270 contribution, $250 went to Sal Russo, and $20 to candidates.
Just think, the original tea partiers were pissed about a few pennies on monopolized tea, while Russo is taking a 92 percent cut--in the face of indifference. "Oh, I don’t know," said tea-partier Ashmead when informed of the Express' rather extravagant self-servings. "Living back here in Idaho, I don’t know too much about what is going on. I hope they’re helping the candidates." Hello?