Today in the Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal:

[Peter] Kinder made a good first step [in promising to reimburse the state for his inappropriate hotel stays in St. Louis]. State Auditor Tom Schweich should go the rest of the way by using his office's new rapid response team to review Kinder's hotel stays.

Last year, a few days before the Show Me Social Justice International Film Festival in Warrensburg, Kinder questioned using government money for a festival designed to spur long-term economic development. On Sept. 7, he sent a message on Twitter critical of the festival: "We got this instead of roads, bridges?"

The same question might be asked now about Kinder's use of government money for stays in some of Missouri's swankiest hotels:

"We got this instead of roads and bridges?"

Exhibit A: A screenshot of Kinder's campaign video that was filmed, produced & distributed exclusively for campaign purposes

Yesterday, Auditor Tom Schweich announced a “rapid response team” to crack down on politicking on state time.

Schweich’s team shouldn’t have far to go for its first raid.   Schweich’s first floor capitol office shares a plumbing stack with 2nd floor Lt. Governor Peter Kinder.

Monitoring Kinder’s Twitter account with an ear to the plumbing stack, Schweich team should be able to quickly catch Kinder spewing partisan missives from the porcelain throne in his second floor office.  A quick dash up the stairs, subpoenas in hand, should save taxpayers thousands of dollars.  

And Schweich's new press aide might end up being the star witness against Kinder, his former boss.  While working for the Lt. Governor, he was best known for retweeting Kinder’s  partisan missives—what lawyers like Schweich call "an accessory after the fact."  Add in a Team Kinder campaign video produced with taxpayer dollars, fundraising for Republican campaign committees with official resources and the use of official resources to develop donors for his private Health Care Inaction slush fund... and the Auditor has plenty to work with. 

At the tail end of this weekend's Steve Kraske column:

Few political deals appear as transparent as the one that was consummated right after Christmas.

And the reason it went down right after Christmas was in the hopes that you wouldn’t notice.

On Dec. 30, former Gov. Matt Blunt formally forgave a $300,000 loan made to Peter Kinder’s 2008 re-election campaign for Missouri lieutenant governor.

That’s a lot of money, and it’s a debt that was hanging over Kinder’s head as he was gearing up for his 2012 grudge match for governor against Democrat Jay Nixon.

Last year, Kinder made an outsized donation of $220,000 to Tom Schweich’s successful campaign for state auditor. That came after Kinder had worked quietly to persuade Schweich to get out of the GOP primary for U.S. Senate, in which he was lining up against — insert drumroll here — Matt Blunt’s father, Roy. 

As was predicted many months ago, former Governor Matt Blunt forgave a $300,000 loan to Peter Kinder , one day before Kinder's debt committee left over from his 2008 reelection campaign is set to shut down.  

Kinder never repaid a penny of his $300k bailout, but somehow found $220,000 for Thomas Schweich's auditor campaign after Schweich cut a deal with Roy Blunt (and allies) to exit the Senate race. 

Ah, the "back-room politics of the sedentary, uncreative Republican leadership in this state."

The Post-Dispatch endorsed Auditor Susan Montee this weekend:

Ms. Montee, who is seeking a second term, has taken a less flamboyant approach to the job than did Ms. McCaskill, her predecessor and now a Democratic U.S. senator. Ms. Montee often goes into the field and does hands-on auditing.

Mr. Schweich accuses her of politicizing the office, but there’s little evidence to support that charge. Ms. Montee says the audits are released when they are complete. Mr. Schweich promises a full audit of the state’s use of federal stimulus funds. Ms. Montee says such audits have been underway since the funds began flowing to the state in 2009.

What politics we’ve noticed in the auditor’s office come from the Republican-controlled Legislature cutting the size of Ms. Montee’s staff.  Perhaps that’s just because of state budget problems, but Ms. Montee has streamlined the office to make sure the work gets done.

Either candidate would make a fine auditor, but we’re not sure the auditor’s office can contain Mr. Schweich’s ambitions. He toyed with making a run for the U.S. Senate this year, and Ms. McCaskill will need a Republican opponent in 2012.

Voters should re-elect Susan Montee so that Mr. Schweich can begin full-time campaigning for the job he really wants.

During this morning's debate between Auditor Susan Montee and Ambassador Thomas Schweich, both candidates promised to serve full terms in elected in November.  

Such a promise wouldn't normally be all that interesting, but it is notable given Schweich's previous warnings to other Republicans that he might mount a revenge campaign in 2012 if there were deemed to be insufficiently supportive of his 2010 race.  Gossip writer Jerry Berger also wrote recently that Schweich's deal to get out of the Senate race included some promise of support for a 2012 Senate run.  Here is video of Schweich contemplating his revenge on camera from KY3:

Speaking of Schweich's decision to cut a backroom deal to get out of the Senate race, he was unable to give a cogent response to a direct question about it.  Hope to post video of that soon... 

Jerry Berger has a theory:

TOM (TOMORROW) SCHWEICH

Bryan Cave lawyer Tom Schweich, who probably knows a lot more about Afghanistan than Affton or Gallatin, was supposed to be a U.S. senator.  But, he bowed to the pressure (and promises) of his fellow Republicans and left this year’s field largely open for U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, avoiding a clash of pedigrees in the season’s marquee race.  Schweich’s willingness to postpone his ambitions to be in Washington, D.C., until he can face off with U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill in 2012, earned him a war chest of big Republican donations for an uphill campaign to unseat incumbent AuditorSusan Montee.  Anchored by local GOP super-donor Sam Fox, Schweich has been racking up donations in Ladue-size chunks of $10,000 and $20,000 in recent days...

Maybe this is the revenge candidacy Schweich warned Dave Catanese (then with KY3) about last year? 

Either way, the idea that Schweich is going to win a competitive GOP primary in 2012 sounds pretty ridiculous to me.  Schweich is an uninspiring hypocrite who wasn't "earned" anything.

Thomas Schweich, on stage with "the sedentary, uncreative Republican leadership in this state" (his words) in Kansas City today, said that "what you’re seeing in the current auditor [Susan Montee] is a hyper-partisan auditor, protecting the Obama agenda, flip-flopping on the issues and also issuing politically motivated audits.”

Really?  This is the same guy who promised Republican donors one short year ago that he would use the office of the Auditor to "aggressively" pursue Gov. Jay Nixon "leading up to the 2012 gubernatorial election."  In Schweich's words, "There's an important policy reason that this auditor's race is so important, and there's also a very significant reason from a political standpoint if you're a loyal Republican."  Talk about a change in approach. 

And I just can't get over the idea of Schweich making a huge deal of his campaign fly-around with John Ashcroft, Kit Bond, Jack Danforth, Margaret Kelly, Peter Kinder and Jim Talent after calling out said group of GOP leaders for their backroom deals and "sedentary, uncreative" leadership.  "The Missouri Republican Party seems to have no plan for responsible Missourians. Just saying no to what Obama or Nixon wants is not a plan," he wrote in March 2009.  Then he makes a deal to excuse himself from the US Senate race and secure financial and political support for a lower office, and his skewering of the MOGOP disappears from memory and the press coverage of the race. 

Pretty soon, I expect Schweich to say that revenge candidacies and rock and roll will be the downfall of our democracy.

On the list of things Thomas Schweich will not talk about in his fly-around today the "uncreative Republican leadership in this state," you'll find this column by Thomas Schweich condemning the "uncreative Republican leadership in this state," printed in the Post-Dispatch in March 2009 before he revealed himself to be a remarkably unprincipled hypocrite with a deal to drop out of the U.S. Senate race and run for State Auditor. :

The end of the Missouri Republican Party
By Thomas A. Schweich

Across the state, large numbers of forward-looking Republicans are concerned that a small group of Missouri Republican leaders have - without a serious dialogue or discussion about the future of the party - anointed U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt as the GOP candidate to replace retiring Missouri legend Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond. There has been an active effort to crush, pre-emptively, any possible challenger. Yet most of them acknowledge that Blunt will have very difficult time winning.

Roy Blunt is a dedicated public servant, a patriot and a worthy man. But I believe he should not be the nominee of our party for Bond's seat.

As a lifelong Republican and Missourian - and a former ambassador and senior international law enforcement official under President George W. Bush - I am at a loss for why the Republican Party of Missouri would rather be united in defeat than fight for victory. Blunt's vulnerabilities have been discussed widely on talk radio and the Internet. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, who has announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the seat, will paint him as a leader of the Congress that delivered us a multi-trillion dollar deficit. She will say he turned a blind eye to the greeding frenzy on Wall Street.

Worse yet, I already can see the advertisements showing grainy pictures of his family members, trumpeting that they are lobbyists for some powerful industries that have hurt ordinary Missourians. And, like it or not, Blunt's son - another well-meaning guy - left the governor's office under a cloud that has not yet lifted. Can you imagine the field day that Carnahan will have? For Republicans, it is in all likelihood a recipe for disaster. Most everyone knows it, yet only a few will say it out loud.

Missouri already has popular Democrats serving as governor, senator and attorney general. If we lose the second Senate seat, the party will be in such shambles that it could take a decade or more to recover. While there is no denying Blunt's commitment to serving his country, he represents the Republican Party of the past, not the party of the future. We need to change direction before it is too late.

The new head of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, has said that the party is looking for fresh faces - people with a lot of energy and a commitment to rebuilding the party with a completely new image. Blunt is the opposite of what Steele has said he wants. I guess we have not learned anything from the elections of 2008.

Moreover, the Missouri Republican Party seems to have no plan for responsible Missourians. Just saying no to what Obama or Nixon wants is not a plan.

We need a party that is devoted to preserving the free-market system against the Obama onslaught on private enterprise, while recognizing that hard-working, responsible Missourians who have lost their jobs and health care should have a pretty strong federal safety net until they are back on their feet. We need to close regulatory loopholes and crack down on economic criminals, not nationalize our financial and auto industries with huge new federal bureaucracies.

We need to stick by our core values of protection of life and the right to bear arms but get out of people's bedrooms and private lives with our mean-spirited moral dictates. And we need a nuanced foreign policy that achieves our security objectives without using tactics that backfire and actually make us even more enemies around the world.

We need a party that is more economically responsible, more tolerant, more energetic, less closed-minded and less judgmental. Blunt cannot credibly take Missouri forward on that sort of a platform.

We should not discourage competition in the race for the Republican nomination for Senate. We should shed some light on the back-room politics of the sedentary, uncreative Republican leadership in this state, which appears to be in denial about the unfortunate route that we are traveling right now. They either should stop crushing the competition and start looking for a new direction or stand aside and let others take on the task.

Thomas A. Schweich is ambassador-in-residence and visiting professor at Washington University. He served the Bush administration as ambassador for counter-narcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan, deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement affairs and chief of staff of the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

From the MOGOP's announcement of "Tom Schweich for Auditor Day:"

Tom is not afraid to stand up to his own party and he will not bend to political pressure because he is dedicated to protecting taxpayers.

Apart from the fact that Schweich folded like a lawn chair when he tried to stand up to his party, this is right on.

Notice anything odd about this list of speakers for the upcoming "9/12" rally in St. Louis?

Wackadoo Steve King and Georgia Rep. Tom Price are on the docket, so event organizers clearly haven't created some sort of no-politicians-allowed policy. 

Peter Kinder's maniacal tweeting has made it abundantly clear that he lacks the judgment and grasp on reality required of public officials.  But has it also failed to win over the tea party wing of the Republican Party in St. Louis -- the true target of his outreach?  

Is Ed Martin's absence part of his campaign's desperate (and very recent) move to the center? He was in on the ground floor of the St. Louis Tea Party -- but now he may be absent from one of their big events, just weeks before the general election?

What's going on here?  Ambassador Thomas Schweich is telling people that he would be an "independent" State Auditor if elected in November.  From the Washington University Student Life newspaper.

Although Schweich is a Republican, he said he would bring an "independent" mind to the job.

This is most certainly at odds with the rhetoric he employed during his primary fight with Allen Icet.  As printed last September in the News-Leader:

"There's an important policy reason that this auditor's race is so important, and there's also a very significant reason from a political standpoint if you're a loyal Republican," said Schweich, a Washington University law professor and former ambassador to Afghanistan.

It's almost like Schweich has completely changed his message now that he's talking to general election voters. 

Not so long ago, Thomas Schweich really hated the idea of Roy Blunt being the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate. As in, he hated it so much that he wrote a long opinion piece in the Post-Dispatch titled, "The End of the Republican Party." 

Since writing the piece, of course, Blunt, Peter Kinder and the rest of the GOP establishment bought Schweich out of the Senate primary so he could run for Auditor (exactly the kind of behavior he said he abhorred). With copious amounts of cash from Kinder (himself propped up by $300,000 in loans from Matt Blunt that curiously never get repaid), Schweich pulled out his own victory over House Budget Chair Allen Icet, optimistic that he might have a front-row seat for the certain doom he predicted last year.

Anyhow, since Blunt's coronation is the precipitating factor for the "End of the Republican Party," we would be neglecting our duties if we did not reprint the Schweich's column in full for you once again.

THE END OF THE MISSOURI REPUBLICAN PARTY
By Thomas A. Schweich | Posted: Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Across the state, large numbers of forward-looking Republicans are concerned that a small group of Missouri Republican leaders have - without a serious dialogue or discussion about the future of the party - anointed U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt as the GOP candidate to replace retiring Missouri legend Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond. There has been an active effort to crush, pre-emptively, any possible challenger. Yet most of them acknowledge that Blunt will have very difficult time winning.

Roy Blunt is a dedicated public servant, a patriot and a worthy man. But I believe he should not be the nominee of our party for Bond's seat.

Uberconservative gajillionaire Rex Sinquefield donated $25,000 to the Rep. Allen Icet campaign this weekend, his first direct contribution in the contest between Icet and Ambassador Thomas Schweich. 

Still, Sinquefield's late money isn't even enough to keep up with Schweich's last-minute money.  Prominent GOP donor Sam Fox donated an additional $30,000 on Friday, and Lt. Governor Peter Kinder upped his total investment to $220,000 on Thursday.

Why, you ask, would Peter Kinder be dumping yet another $120,000 into the fledgling Tom Schweich for Auditor campaign just days before the election?  Simply put, Schweich’s fundraising effort has tanked – BIG TIME – since former Massachusetts Governor Mitt “Plastic Man” Romney left town. Schweich’s political team has probably bought more advertising than Schweich’s finance team can pay for.

Without the big Jack Danforth and Sam Fox-generated checks, Schweich’s money-raising team has been lethargic.  In the entire month of July, Schweich received a total of 3 (THREE) checks for over $5,000 (Kinder’s $120K, Sam Fox’s $30,000 today and a $9,000 check from a Julius Schweich).  This after showing dozens of checks during the Romney event back in April and May. 

Lt. Governor Peter Kinder donated an additional $120,000 to Ambassador Thomas Schweich's campaign for State Auditor yesterday; this week's contribution comes on top of the $100,000 check Kinder wrote to boost Schweich's numbers on the final day of the fourth quarter of 2009.

All told, Schweich has been required to raise more than $1.2M from the Missouri GOP establishment to fend off House Budget Chair Allen Icet in the State Auditors race, since cutting his deal to drop his bid for the U.S. Senate.

Schweich expected Icet to get lost and let him have a clear primary (one of those things that Schweich used to hate), but it obviously didn't work that way.

Once upon a time, Schweich declared that "the Missouri Republican Party seems to have no plan for responsible Missourians," decried the "back-room politics of the sedentary, uncreative Republican leadership in this state," noted that Matt Blunt "left the governor's office under a cloud that has not yet lifted," and remarked that Roy Blunt "represents the Republican Party of the past, not the party of the future."  But now that he's found himself the choice of said sedentary, uncreative Republican leadership -- and the beneficiary of their financial largess -- Schweich has been somewhat reluctant to say this sort of thing. 

Tom Schweich loves to be called Ambassador.

He calls himself the "Ambassador in Residence" at the Washington University Law School.

His copyright infringing band is called "Ambassador Tom and the Mortgaged Youth."

His web page is littered with references to his favorite title.

And that has political insiders speculating that, if elected, Schweich will insist the State Auditor's staff refer to him as Ambassador, rather than Auditor.

That would be unprecedented, but perhaps short-lived.  His heavy flirtation with the US Senate race, his constant gaze east and the standing one-way ticket to DC tucked inside his diplomatic sash all suggest that Ambassador Tom has bigger things planned in life than serving the hard-working, plain-speaking people of Missouri as their humble State Auditor.

KMBC's Micheal Mahoney has published the endorsements of the Jackson County TEA party.  The organization has awarded "A" grades to Sen. Chuck Purgason in the U.S. Senate race, former Rep. Vicky Hartzler in the Fourth Congressional District, Ambassador Thomas Schweich in the Auditor's race and Rep. Gary Dusenberg in the 8th State Senate District primary. 

Read the whole list here.

The Allen Icet campaign found some scary music to go along with their complaints that Ambassador Thomas Schweich doesn't hate Democrats enough.  Behold:

Responding to a complaint filed by the Thomas Schweich campaign with the Missouri Ethics Commission, Allen Icet has decided that Steve Tilley's $25,000 check was just a loan, not a contribution.

Icet spokesperson Steve Walsh: “It’s a clerical oversight. That’s what we're calling it. A clerical oversight."