Super Pac Scamming 'Carson for VP' Money Shuts Down

The good, the bad, and the Beltway.

The leader of the main super-PAC supporting Ben Carson has declared the group “dormant” after questions were raised about its continued fundraising off of Carson’s name.

“The 2016 Committee is, effective Friday, dormant,” the super-PAC’s head, John Philip Sousa IV, told The Hill on Monday.

Sousa said he “can’t go over” the reasons for why he shut down the super-PAC at the end of last week, but the pro-Carson group had been under fire for continuing to raise money despite Carson no longer being a candidate for president.
After spending more than $10 million in a failed bid to make Carson the Republican presidential nominee, Sousa’s group announced two weeks ago that it was transforming into a big-money vehicle designed to promote him for vice president.

Prominent conservatives denounced the move, calling it a “scam PAC” run by “grifters.” Carson decried the fundraising in a Facebook post without mentioning the super-PAC by name.

The one constant in American politics is the number of people who can still be duped into giving money to nebulous or dubious political causes. The Carson supporters in this campaign were generally older, the kind who still live life via snail mail. Political fundraisers love people like that, knowing that they can have their heart and purse strings manipulated rather easily.

Money doesn’t need to be raised to “promote” an individual for the vice president slot on a party’s ticket. True, there’s nothing illegal about it, but it is sleazy.

The Super-Pac model isn’t perfect, but it’s better than leaving all the spending power in elections up to Big Labor. The inevitable shifty ones will have to be policed by those of us who don’t want to see them done away with altogether. It worked in this case. Hopefully, it will make others a little gun shy.

Chalk one up for public shaming.