| Companies like this can only exist at all in the environment of the widespread myth of a prolifigate government spreading money far and wide available for the taking. Conservatives have spent decades assiduously creating and promoting this myth of wasteful government, scheme piled on top of scheme, "pork", "earmarks" and their infamous cherry picking of usually quite useful but sound-bite-poor research studies. In fact, John McCain is one of the worst offenders of all this, on his long crusade to misrepresent the scope of Congressional earmarks, and his spring of 2009 series of tweets questioning the value of various government funded studies. Discover called him out among others, but the only thing new about this was doing it over Twitter. He's far from alone, more infamously and hilariously was Bobby Jindal's bizzare jab at volcano monitoring made more hilarious when a volcano in Alaska erupted a month later (not to mention Iceland this year). This myth also makes an appearance in the climate change debate, where deniers are convinced that scientists fabricate evidence of climate change in order to win government research dollars.
Hayworth has stumbled into the confluence of at least two major conservative myths; that of average people being able to get rich quickly and easily, and of course that the government has reams of generously funded programs itching to hand out money.
In that sense, he's the perfect conservative symbol. Fleecing those gullible enough to believe the lies his movement created in a scam based on that very lie. Abusing his position as a former member of Congress to lend credibility to the enterprise while hypocritically profiting from violating conservative small government principles by hyping generous government programs. "Pay me to tell you how to take advantage of all the wasteful spending I and my cohort didn't cut while running the US government!"
Rick Perlstein used to call this sort of thing "The Big Con" where he routinely pointed out instances of conservative leaders not just lying to their followers, but profiting from the lies and the lying. For all the advantages of being lock-step, conservativism does have its disadvantages, in that so many of them are just in it for the money, and are willing to fleece each other.
Plus, don't miss the dogwhistle that these myths require, from the National Grant Conference's FAQs:
Why does the Government give money away?
The Government's goals are to stimulate the economy, create new jobs and provide affordable housing, as well as, help minorities, handicapped and veterans.
You may as well help yourself to this money citizen, or the silly government will give it to undeserving types like minorities, the poor and the infirm.
I don't suppose Hayworth will win the nomination now, but his is the prototypical story of what one could expect from a movement conservative leader, and a fitting epitaph to the Class of 1994. |
STATE BLOGS
News emerged this week that Tea Party favoured Arizona Senate Republican primary challenger JD Hayworth (pictured right, picture from TPM) had previously worked as a paid endorser for the "National Grants Conference" a company that purports to help customers get access to government grants and low interest loans. John McCain's campaign is pumping this story because they think it makes a conservative look bad to have been promoting use of government funded services and programs. While I can see that aspect of it, there's something even better going on here. Hayworth is not just fleecing marks for profit (though it is a scam), this is a kind of super conservative meta-con, a con built upon a con. That's some kind of achievement.
