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Erick Erickson just wasn't enough for CNN. No, they had to go just a little farther into Tea Party land and hire Dana Loesch, editor-in-chief of Andrew Breitbart's Big Government and St. Louis Tea Party wingnut.
Here's a bit about Loesch from some research I did last year.
Andrew Breitbart, Bill Hennessy and Dana Loesch are also associated with American Majority. American Majority is funded by the Sam Adams Alliance. The Sam Adams Alliance has a newly-established relationship with close Dick Armey associate and former chief of staff Denis Calabrese. Denis Calabrese is also founder and principal of The Patriot Group, a lobbying firm established with the goal of "lobbying with backbone."
Hennessy's most recent post links to the American Majority 'grassroots summit' in Kansas City this weekend. One of the featured speakers is Eric O'Keefe, Chairman of the Sam Adams Alliance, also on the board of Wisconsin Club for Growth and a former director of Americans for Limited Government. ALG has been associated with Howard Rich and Grover Norquist.
Scroll down a bit further on the page and you'll find the Koch connection through the Americans for Prosperity Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska sponsorships.
So it goes once again. These so-called grass roots activists are really all just part of the thug wing of the Republican party. If we were to analyze the DNA of the St. Louis Tea Party, we'd find Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, Charles Koch, and a bunch of College Republicans on the main strand.
Here she is defending the guy who brought a gun to a town hall meeting, discovered only after it fell out of his pocket:
CNN's bear hug of compulsive liars and name-callers guarantees them a seat in the 9th circle of electoral journalism hell, where they can promote the Tea Party as some kind of legitimate political force instead of the wad of corporate money and magical smoke to hide the carnival mirrors.
Here's a blurb from their announcement:
CNN is gearing up for the election season with the addition of political contributors from across the ideological spectrum. Democratic strategist Cornell Belcher, conservative commentator Will Cain, and local Tea Party leader and radio talk show host Dana Loesch will appear across the network’s prime time programs, as well as other dayparts and platforms.
Oooh, so we can look forward to commentary like this, where she defends poor lil Christine O'Donnell from the sharky liberals?
Here's a little snippet just for a taste of the crazy you can expect from CNN during this election season, while they promote the hell out of Tea Party candidates by proxy.
COOPER: You're saying the idea of separation of church and state actually prevents Sharia from becoming the law of a land?
BEGALA: Exactly. It's -- it's why we can't have Sharia law in America, because we have a separation of church and state.
LOESCH: Well, Sharia -- no, no, no. Sharia law allows for -- in fact they just passed this, I believe, over in Saudi Arabia, that it is OK under Sharia law to beat your wife, as long as there are no bruises. So I think we have basic assault laws that would prevent that, not the separation of church and state.
Of course, with that answer, Loesch left the door open that (OMG, gasp!) Sharia law could become law here.
This is what we will see during the primaries, assuming one watches CNN, which this writer will NOT be doing. Every day, every night, lots of the Loesch crazy. Hell, maybe CNN ought to just buy out Breitbart for the videos, if nothing else.
Our new tag on Twitter is #TeaNN instead of @CNN. It's just more descriptive.
Videos: h/t Heather
