A look at Dana Loesch and the STLTP split-up

The St. Louis Activist Hub has reported extensively on Dana Loesch and Jim Hoft's exit from the astroturfed St. Louis Tea Party group. And now, RFT's Chad Garrison broke this news yesterday:

The co-founder of the St. Louis Tea Party has officially left the organization.

In a tweet this morning Dana Loesch writes: "Yes, I am finished with the St. Louis Tea Party. Not keen on grassroots organizing under a candidate, even unofficially. Never will be."

The St. Louis Tea Party this morning issued its own press release this morning, confirming the split. "The St. Louis Tea Party certainly benefited from Dana's rising stardom and talent," wrote St. Louis Tea Party board president, Bill Hennessy, who founded the organization along with Loesch in 2009. "And we can't help but think our energetic and effective grass roots have propelled Dana's career."

 Since helping to found the Tea Party, Loesch has had a meteoric rise on the political landscape, getting a job as a CNN pundit and editor of the right-wing website Big Journalism.

Daily RFT has messages out with Hennessy and Loesch for comment. At this point it's unclear exactly why Loesch left the organization, but Hennessy suggests in today's press release that the two leaders had different opinions on conservative candidates.


 Progressive blogger Adam Shriver, who often chronicles the goings-on the Tea Party, reported yesterday that Loesch and Hennessy disagreed on which Republican to support in Missouri's Second Congressional District, with Loesch backing the establishment candidate of Ann Wagner and Hennessy favoring Ed Martin.

Shriver also reported yesterday that Loesch's husband, Chris Loesch, demanded that the St. Louis Tea Party quit using the logo that he designed. That logo (right) no longer appears on the Tea Party site.

Loesch will do anything to further her career, even if that means abandoning her principles and throwing her friends under the bus. She is a GOP shill, while supposedly pretending to "hate all political parties equally." For this reason, she's known as Dana The Diva.

 The St. Louis Tea Party put out a press release today confirming what I reported yesterday: they broke up with Dana Loesch. Loesch, naturally, is convinced this proves how heroically principled she is:

 And, of course, there's the fact that the St. Louis tea party appeared to have violated their 501(c)4 by using their money to support Ed Martin's candidacy with advertisements. Oh, and by systematically putting their logos on "Taypayers for Ed Martin" signs. Did Loesch complain then about organizing for a candidate? Sure didn't.

It's funny. Loesch threw the St. Louis Bloggers Guild under the bus when she no longer needed them. She threw her former website designer under the bus when she no longer needed him. She pushed Gina Loudon out of the tea party. And now she's throwing the tea party under the bus cause they're a drag on her minor celebrity status. Amazingly, it's always someone else's fault.

 Dr. Gina Loudon still has a radio show on KJSL from 4-6 in St. Louis, and is a big-time Evangelical Conservative homophobic racist bigoted buttmunch kook.

Back to Loesch. Proof that she will do anything to gain influence in the conservative movement at large:

 This was a result of a fight between two different factions in the St. Louis Tea Party. One group (the Loeschs, Gateway Pundit, and Jen Ennenbach) supported GOP establishment candidate Ann Wagner (a candidate for the head of the RNC and the campaign chairman for Roy Blunt) and another group (John Burns, Ben Evans, Michelle Moore, Bill Hennessy, and Darin Morley) supporting nutty Ed Martin.

 For the record:

• Dana Loesch voted for Mitt Romney in the 2008 Republican primary.
• She explicitly said that she liked RomneyCare.
• She supported Roy Blunt over the more conservative Chuck Purgason for the U.S. Senate.
• She supported Ed Martin over John Wayne Tucker, and in fact attacked Tucker on her show after Ed Martin paid her husband to make a commercial for him.
• Now's she's supporting the ultimate GOP establishment candidate Ann Wagner over the comparably more conservative Ed Martin.
• Oh, and she's "edgy" for some reason.

 Her BFF, Jim Hoft, also decided to side with the establishment.

 Obviously, I have no love for Ed Martin. And I'm on record as being critical of the St. Louis Tea Party for claiming to be principled while supporting Roy Blunt over Chuck Purgason and Ed Martin over John Wayne Tucker. But I have to say I actually do have some sympathy for the core group that, unlike Dana Loesch and Jim Hoft, is at least attempting to move forward by holding true to their ideals and opposing the GOP establishment. Though I think they're wrong in believing that Ed Martin is a principled conservative, it is at least clear that they felt like voting for Blunt was merely an imperfect step towards their ultimate goal, and that they would have to try to more actively oppose the crony capitalism of the modern Republican party in the future if they really wanted to live up to their ideals.

On the other hand, Dana Loesch, who voted for Mitt Romney in the 2008 primary and explicitly said that she liked RomneyCare before realizing that it was more profitable to be a "tea party spokesperson" on national television, is unsurprisingly abandoning Ed Martin in favor of Roy Blunt's 2010 campaign manager, GOP insider Ann Wagner. And Jim "Gateway Pundit" Hoft, writing on Loesch's website Big Journalism, also recently launched an attack on Ed Martin. However, members of the St. Louis tea party leadership Michelle Moore, John Burns, and Ben Evans wrote a recent post dismantling Hoft's attacks on Martin. You can read the full post here, but I'll share a few highlights:

• First, they point out that Martin didn't turn the race ugly; he was actually the target of an attack from Dan Riehl earlier in the year on Breitbart's Big sites (where Loesch is an editor).
• They reiterate Darin Morley's point that it was ridiculous for Hoft to try to imply that Ed Martin is more connected to Roy Blunt than is Ann Wagner.
• They criticized Hoft's attempts to pretend that Wagner's husband is no longer involved in advocating on behalf of Enterprise Rent-a-Car:

  As everyone in the Tea Party knows Ray delisted himself in preparation for Ann’s campaign; however, he is still Enterprise's Government & Public Affairs Vice-President. In that capacity, he oversees Enterprise's lobbying and he helps determine where their campaign funds go. Again, Jim knows this, but deliberately ignores it in the post.

• They point out that Chip Gerdes, a familiar creepy scuzzbucket for readers of this blog, said that he wrote Dan Riehl's original attack on Ed Martin as a "warning shot:"

  As mentioned at the top, Hoft was quoted in the first hit piece against Ed Martin that came out last August on Big Government. That piece, supposedly written by Dan Riehl, sparked a firestorm among Tea Party conservatives in Missouri. Upon questioning, Chip Gerdes, another paid political consultant, stated that he wrote the piece as a “warning shot” to Ed Martin because of comments that Martin made on a Christian AM radio station.

• They also question where Hoft got his data and whether he even did his own writing:

  If Gerdes is writing hit pieces for Ann Wagner and publishing them under Dan Riehl’s name, what else has he written?...We ask: Where did those figures come from? Dan Riehl and Dana Loesch have written on Twitter and in Tea Party emails that hundreds of thousands of dollars were given to Ed Martin by Ann Wagner’s Enterprise connections. This has been proven false. Who gave Jim the data and where is it? Let’s see some research.

Could this be the beginning of the end of the Loesch Crime Mafia's (aka the Breitbart/Loesch/Hoft Axis of Evil) influence on St. Louis politics or will be the beginning of national prominence for her cronies? There might've been signs of this happening back in
 September 2010.

Loesch tweets that "Union Thugs have ruined Labor Day," Rita calls her out.

There goes Dana Loesch bashing the Unions as usual, this time suggesting that "'Union Thugs' have ruined Labor Day."

Ah, spending the day remembering what labor used to be like before our working class was bossed around by thugs and co-opted by a party. 2:36 PM Sep 6th via Twitter for Android

If that nonsense wasn't enough for STL Teabagger Ms. Loesch, She also falsely accused Adam Shriver of cyberstalking, libel, and Defamation.

@WUSTL Who to report a member of your staff cyberstalking, defaming, libeling ppl? Investigation whether use WashU resources to do so? 10:52 PM Sep 2nd via Seesmic Desktop

Reboot Congress and Berger's Beat falsely claims that Mayor Slay is for Ed Martin.

"Ed Martin will give Carnahan a run for his money. . .I like Ed," said St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay of Martin, who will duke it out with incumbent Cong. Russ Carnahan.

That's from Sunday's Berger's Beat. It's pretty surprising to see an elected Democrat speak so kindly of Ed Martin. Perhaps Mayor Slay will walk that back in a few days.

http://rebootcongress.blogspot.com/2010/09/does-st-louis-city-government-back-ed.html

Now, the real truth from Adam Shriver's STL Activist Hub:

Actually, Slay pushed back against Berger's quote in a couple of tweets. First, he took issue with the quote being used out of context:

Second, he mentioned his own involvement in a fundraiser for Carnahan (not entirely clear whether he's hosting the fundraiser or just participating in it):

So anyway, yes, Slay is clearly "endosring" Russ Carnahan. I suppose one can ask just how much Slay supports Carnahan, but it's obviously a far different story than what Morley is presenting

http://stlactivisthub.blogspot.com/2010/09/mayor-slay-is-fundraising-for-russ.html


Now, today, Russ Carnahan put out this statement to rebut Ed Martin.

Carnahan's Office Responds To Ed Martin's Ridiculous Request... and calls out Martin

Ed Martin filed a Freedom Of Information Request asking for a combination of easily accessible public information and confidential emails from constituents. The response from Russ Carnahan's office was a thing of beauty. You can read it below. As someone on my facebook wall said, "Caroline Battles is my new heroine."

Also At: http://www.box.net/shared/vgn5h7tjff


We have this goodie that Dana Loesch has been caught lying about how much Ed Martin gave to her. She has no ethics whatsoever and should've been nominated Assclown Of The Week at least a few times this year.


Dana Loesch lied about her $2,500 claim all along, actually $5K

Earlier in the year, I pointed out that Dana Loesch had been ignoring Ed Martin's Republican primary opponent John Wayne Tucker until finally going on an unprovoked, unhinged Twitter rampage against him. Throughout this whole ordeal, Loesch never once disclosed that her husband's business Shock City Studios had received $2,500 from Ed Martin, apparently for the production of a campaign video. The story was picked up by Chad Garrison at the RFT, and this caused the Loeschs to freak out.

But what I find very strange is that while Loesch was ranting about how clear she is about her ethics, and explaining how she'd never sell her soul for $2,500, she somehow forgot to mention that they actually received $5,000 from Ed Martin, not $2,500. That's right, the $2,500 check previously mentioned was just one of two checks. Shock City Studios received another $2,500 check from Ed Martin in November of 2009. Here are the two different sections of financial reports:

Finally, on the Second Hour of The Dana Show today, she had a discussion which Rita called in and refuted her Right-Wing anti-Islamic screed and better yet, caller Rita told Loesch: "You're an Idiot." She gets a ton of Cool Points, even though Dana will probably nominate her for Tool Of The Week.

At around the 22:40 mark of that hour, Rita's exchange with her starts there. At 28:22, the caller (who I agreed with) told the Teabagging Watercarrier "You're an Idiot! Goodbye."

http://www.971talk.com/dana/podcast.aspx