Astroturf! Dana Loesch Blacklists Conservative Challenger to Insider Ed Martin

Though they claim to be part of a national grassroots movement, many people, including Jamie Allman and the conservative bloggers at Hillbilly Logic, have questioned whether the St. Louis Tea Party is merely carrying water for the same old establishment Republicans who failed to actually adhere to conservative values the last time they were in power. This was confirmed today as it was revealed that St. Louis Tea Party co-founder Dana Loesch is preventing conservative challenger John Wayne Tucker from appearing on her radio show while giving free publicity to his GOP Establishment challenger Ed Martin, the disgraced former chief of staff for Matt Blunt. Loesch went on a Twitter tirade today about Tucker (note that the tweets read chronologically from the bottom up):



Loesch was somewhat coy about who she was speaking about, but then revealed it in an exchange on Twitter (again reading from the bottom, up):

Those three names would be John Wayne Tucker, Ed Martin's challenger in the Republican primary. To confirm, I asked Tucker if she was blacklisting him. This is how he responded:

If you'll note above, Loesch's lame excuse for not having Tucker on as a guest is that it would be equivalent to "electioneering." This is a little odd, considering that she's had his opponent Ed Martin on her show a number of times, including March 30 and March 2nd of this year. So apparently it's not "electioneering" to have Loesch's favorite GOP insider candidate on the show, but it would be "electioneering" to have his grassroots conservative challenger on?

This fits with what I've been saying for a long time. The leaders of the St. Louis Tea Party are less interested in a genuine grassroots movement than in bolstering their own standing in the mainstream media and among Republican operatives. The main "revolution" they're working towards is a revolution of the guest list of the Chris Matthews, Larry King, and Larry Kudlow shows. And if they can get the same old Republican operatives like Roy Blunt and Ed Martin elected along the way, well then they're fine with that too.