Political Movement As Shakedown

Alex Pareene, via Ritholtz:

The conservative media movement exists primarily as a moneymaking venture. As Rick Perlstein explained in the Baffler, some of the largest conservative media organs are essentially massive email lists of suckers rented to snake oil salesmen. The con isn’t limited to a couple of newsletters and websites: The most prominent conservative organizations in the nation are primarily dedicated to separating conservatives from their money.
FreedomWorks, which is funded primarily by very rich people, solicits donations from non-rich conservative people. More than 80,000 people donated money to FreedomWorks in 2012, and it seems likely that only a small minority of those people were hedge fund millionaires. And what are people who donate to this grass-roots conservative organization funded mostly by a few very rich people getting for their hard-earned money? In addition to paying Dick Armey $400,000 a year for 20 years to stay away, FreedomWorks also apparently spent more than a million dollars paying Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh to say nice things about FreedomWorks, in order to convince listeners to send FreedomWorks money that FreedomWorks would then give to Limbaugh and Beck. It’s a pretty simple con. Beck, meanwhile, also has a subscriber-based media operation, in which people pay his company money for access to programs where Beck expresses opinions that he was paid to hold. He also spent years telling everyone to buy gold from a company that pays him and defrauds consumers.

Just because somebody has a bunch of money, it doesn't indicate that they are immune to ripoff schemes.  On the contrary, they can be very inviting targets, because:

1. They have a bunch of money, and
2. They are used to people telling them what they want to hear.

This leads them to believe the snake oil salesmen like Dick Armey who convince them that they can buy themselves elections, but don't point out how high much the Armeys of the movement are taking from the till.  I love that little detail of paying Armey $8,000,000 to go away.  How do I get a gig like that?