An Ohio-based shopper loyalty program aimed at tea party supporters has been sold to a conservative group that plans to take it national.
Washington-based Unite in Action says it bought the name, concept and online site of the Tea Party Exchange for an undisclosed amount. The exchange in Dayton suspended operations last week after some controversies, including with merchants who said customers complained.
The short-lived Tea Party Exchange was supposed to be a loyalty program for customers who wanted to shop in teabagger-supporting businesses and see their money donated to teabagger causes.
Except that at least in Dayton, Ohio, advertising as a teabagger business didn’t exactly bring in the customers. Quite the opposite. So the Exchange was forced to shut down. Turns out the businesses who had paid $150 to participate in the Exchange were instead losing customers. Some even received threats. One business owner reported being called a Nazi. The founder, Donald Hutchinson, was forced to refund the $150 to the business owners who had bought into the exchange, only to back out when their customers disappeared.
So since that worked out so well, obviously it’s time to take the Exchange national. Sure, it’ll drive away customers, but if you register now, you can get a free key chain. And isn’t that what the free market is all about?
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Having sapped the foundations of liberty for several decades, key elitist forces are completing the emplacement of the economic and political WMD’s with which to overturn government of, by and for the people. But thanks to the arrogance of the Obama faction, many Americans have awakened to the fact that we are in [...]
CO-Gov: Tea party splits with Tancredo | read this item
If there’s any indication that Colorado’s Republican party is on the rails, it’s that Tom Tancredo is positioning himself as the voice of reason with the Tea Party. It’s not working.
Tom Tancredo used to be something of a tea party hero. But not anymore, at least in Colorado. The ex-Congressman’s foray into the state’s gubernatorial race has essentially scuttled Republicans’ chances in the contest — and provoked outrage from local tea party members who feel betrayed after once counting Tancredo among their leaders….
Last December, Tancredo wrote an open letter to Colorado’s 9-12 activists and tea party members, urging them to “think strategically” and arguing that forming a third party in the state was “suicidal and would only result in splitting the conservative vote and guaranteeing the re-election of liberals and socialists.”
So tea partiers worked with Republicans, from the precinct caucuses to the county assemblies to the state convention and finally the primary earlier this month. The movement ended up helping a tea party candidate, Dan Maes, win the Republican gubernatorial nomination. (A plagiarism scandal that hit the frontrunner, Scott McInnis, didn’t hurt). But before tea partiers could savor Maes’ victory — in fact, before Maes even won — Tancredo declared himself unsatisfied with both Maes and McInnis, demanded they drop out after the primary so that the Republican party could pick a better nominee, and then decided to enter the race himself, under the Constitution Party banner. As a result, Tancredo and Maes are now splitting the Republican vote — all but assuring a victory for Democrat John Hickenlooper. The TPM Poll Average shows Hickenlooper leading Maes and Tancredo 44.8%-26.3%-22%. And tea partiers are dismayed….
“He’s totally, I hate to use the word, but he’s ruined [the gubernatorial race],” Lana Fore, the publisher of The Constitutionalist Today, a tea party-friendly monthly newspaper in Colorado, told TPM. Fore said she believed ego was driving Tancredo’s run, but that now “he won’t even get elected as a Wal-Mart door greeter, that’s how many people he’s alienated.”
Tancredo first alienated the teabaggers by supporting the more establishment choice of McInnis, in recognition of the very slim chances of Maes. Maes’ chances outside of Tancredo’s involvement were always questionable. He’s a newbie to politics and until McInnis completely imploded under the weight of the plagiarism scandal, was running double digits behind McInnis. The Dem Hickenlooper is well-liked around the state, with high name recognition and favorables (the beer probably helped with that). Colorado’s electorate is divided roughly into thirds between Dems, GOP, and unaffiliated, and it’s those unaffiliated voters that keep the state unpredicatble. For the last few cycles, they’ve trended Dem, and the likelihood that they be swayed by an unknown with a nutter UN conspiracy theorist bent, well, it’s pretty much non-existent.
It’s a cold welcome to the world of politics for Colorado’s teabaggers.
Aw, poor teabaggers. Their new economic model to encourage teabaggers to shop at teabagger-supporting businesses isn’t working so well.
The Tea Party Exchange suspended operations on Tuesday, Aug. 17 but founder Donald Hutchinson did not say if he would refund the $150 annual membership fee more than two dozen participating businesses paid him this summer.
“Website and business operations are being stopped until further notice,” he wrote in a news release. “Dayton, Ohio was the test market for Tea Party Exchange. TPX will analyze the results of the test to decide any future decisions.”
…
Hutchinson promoted the idea as a way to raise money for Tea Party groups, politically conservative organizations that began cropping up across the country in early 2009. He said the money would help groups supporting limited government, fiscal responsibility and free markets.
Why did the Exchange suspend operations a mere week after it launched? Because it turns out that most consumers in Dayton, Ohio don’t want their money going to teabaggers. And the businesses that had paid $150 to participate in the Exchange were instead losing customers.
Bill DeFries, owner of Beef O’Brady’s Family Sports Club, said he decided to withdraw from the exchange even before Hutchinson closed it. DeFries, who describes himself as a liberal Republican, said Hutchinson had presented the exchange as a way to increase his customer base at his restaurants in Centerville and Beavercreek. Instead, DeFries received threats and was called a Nazi by one woman.
“I feel like I was hoodwinked,” said DeFries. “I think he was trying to make money.”
Guess no one could have predicted that the guy who started a group to promote free markets was just trying to — shudder, gasp — make money.
