Wingnut Welfare Up For The Highest Bidder

Mike Allen has really advanced the cause of exposing pay-to-play media scandals over the past week. Fresh off the Washington Post salons, Allen catches a pillar in the conservative movement, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, trying to sell his own opinions:

The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s support in a bitter legislative dispute, then the group’s chairman flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.

For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)”

The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.

Politico is usually just link-bait, but if they want to expose the media and burn down all the knotty work being done in official Washington, I'll link away!

Note how the weekly column in The Hill is proffered right off the bat. It's also worth noting that FedEx rejected this offer, and right afterwards Keene backed UPS in the dispute. Whether UPS bought off Keene or Keene just got pissy is unclear.

The point is that you simply cannot believe the word of these conservative activists. Or really anyone - the moral here is to always check your sources. But we've seen too many of these kinds of scandals on the conservative side - Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, Jeff Gannon, etc. - to give them the benefit of the doubt at all.