Those are the leading paragraphs of the article. To again encourage readers to go to the original item, here, and read it all, there later in the thing are these nuggets:
Kentucky shows an even starker contrast. Before the May 18 Senate primary, secretary of state and McConnell acolyte Trey Grayson had raised a half million dollars from PACs —20 times the PAC haul of upstart Rand Paul. Paul got a check from outgoing curmudgeon Sen. Jim Bunning, but 18 Republican senators bankrolled Grayson’s campaign, plus the Republican Mainstreet Partnership and three top House Republicans.
[...] A K Street lobbyist who had represented AIG during the bailouts hosted a fundraiser for Grayson, and at least a dozen lobbying firms and industry groups backed him with cash. And of course, Trent Lott was a Grayson donor.
Lott is the captain of the K Street team. He told a reporter last month his thoughts on the Tea Partiers: “We don’t need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples. As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.”
[...] To the K Street wing, the Tea Party types are like the guy who’s playing too hard in a co-ed softball game — he’s sliding headfirst and barking orders at the cutoff man while you’re trying to chum it up with the boys and then maybe go home with the other team’s cute second baseman after the game.
You can see today, by their improved personal financial situations, what Lott and Dole were trying to accomplish in Washington. You can also guess which current Republicans will join them on K Street in a few years — and play ball with them in the meantime.
I will not take the time to check it out, but someone should. Is Michele Bachmann Tea Party, real, or Tea Party astroturf? It would involve looking at where she gets her money from and how happy the big-buck operators show themselves to be with her past service on the House Financial Services Committee, where Bachmann can talk her talk.
Sure, she's an actor in the play. But who's funding the show?