Money Well Spent: GOP Subsidizes Blogger's Attacks on High-Profile Republicans

In what is perhaps the best use of political cash ever embarked upon by the Missouri Republican Party, campaign finance and other documents show that the MOGOP has, for the last nine months, been paying an internet consultant who runs a political blog that regularly attacks GOP gubernatorial candidates and other elected officials.

According to reports filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission, the Missouri Republican State Committee paid $5,000 on August 31, 2007 to a committee called Missouri Spectrum.  Missouri Spectrum quickly turned around in September of 2007 and made a payment of $2,500 to an outfit called NLB Enterprises. 

NLB Enterprises is, according to its own website, a political communications consulting firm headed by a man named Christopher Arps.  NLB Enterprises LLC was registered on October 8, 2007 with the office of the Secretary of State, and lists Christopher Arps as one of the LLC's organizers on its state filings. 

Interestingly, while it doesn't mention the $14,000 judgment entered against him after a suit by the Ethics Commission, Arps' profile on the site does list a couple of the websites for which he claims responsibility.  One is the MO Spectrum website.  From his Facebook bio:

Note particularly that Arps lists among his websites a site called www.okpns.com.

If that site name sounds somewhat familiar to those who are regular consumers of political information within our state's political blogosphere, it may be because there is a site devoted to Missouri political gossip that is called www.mopns.com.  While the Oklahoma site is called Oklahoma Political News Service, the Missouri site is called Missouri Political News Service. 

Not only do the two sites share virtually identical URLs and titles, but their respective site layouts are very similar as well (even down to the shared "ticker" that scrolls across the tops of both pages).

Whether he wants to admit it or not, there is very substantial evidence suggesting that Arps is responsible for the Missouri Political News Service website.  You may be asking yourself why this matters.  Fair enough.  A cruise through the MOPNS archives provides answers.

Here is a small sampling of what the Missouri Republican Party is either paying for or directly subsidizing on Arps' MOPNS site...

From a March 31, 2008 post in which MOPNS slams Kenny Hulshof:

Not trying to pile on the Hulshof Campaign, but this is what we wrote last week on their so far lackluster campaign:

“Facing disorganization and so far running a lackluster campaign, will Team Hulshof abandon the Mr. Clean theme and run to the gutter in an attempt to redefine Steelman?

More of the same on May 8th:

From its earliest days, Kenny Hulshof’s campaign has been dogged with criticism that the candidate is lazy and disorganized. Some have compared his candidacy to that of Fred Thompson. In a story in today’s St. Louis Post, Jo Mannies adds to the perception that Hulshof is lazy.

But MOPNS doesn't just kick Hulshof while he's down.  The site also ridicules GOP House Speaker Rod Jetton:

‘Ol Rod is a real piece of work! Forget the fact that he’s Speaker of the House, while simultaneously running a political consulting business on the side. Or the fact that one of his clients, Rep. Bob Onder, is a fellow House member running to replace Kenny Hulshof. In another ethically questionable move, we learn today that the “Reaper of the House” is sending out support emails for his client from an email account from a defunct campaign. 

MOPNS has also fired volleys at Republican patriarch Kit Bond, describing his office as "in free-fall":

After MOPNS broke the Van Eaton story yesterday the bond office is in spin control.

Look today for an announcement from the senior senator’s office stating that Jason Van Eaton and Matt Roney are “voluntarily” leaving in order to run Senator Bond’s campaign in 2010. (Doesn’t everyone leave 3 years out in order to run a campaign?) 

But don't worry, there's still more Hulshof hammering:

Hulshof’s strategists realize that to have any chance against Steelman or Nixon, they must distance their candidate from the current administration, thus we have the fee office reform plan that really doesn’t seem to reform anything at all.

...We wonder how ethical and clean will that campaign remain when only 20% of Missourians recognize your name, and, you hire “volunteer” campaign consultants who have questionable ethics themselves.

Lest anyone think MOPNS was just a GOPer taking sides in the gubernatorial primary battle, consider the site's bashing of Sarah Steelman (it should be noted that the following --though cached by Google-- has been scrubbed from the MOPNS site):

The last two weeks for the Steelman campaign has been a disaster. We’ve learned that two employees of the Treasurer’s office have been working for the campaign. One, while using his “vacation time” and the other performed web design services for the campaign - we assume on his own time. We’ve also learned that the campaign hired a controversial Kansas City Business magazine editor for media consulting. (Isn’t Jeff Roe enough controversy???) Apparently, this consultant has made some controversial comments about women and the 911 terrorist attacks in the past.

As though all this isn't enough, Arps' site has also blasted Bond staffer Jason Van Eaton for Congressional junkets, dinged Gina Loudon for failing to file disclosure forms, and blamed John Hancock for Kenny Hulshof's Fred Thompson-esque campaign.

Don't get me wrong; I think this is excellent.  I do wonder, however, whether funders of the Missouri Republican Party are satisfied knowing that their contributions are being paid to operatives who are launching regular negative attacks on their Party's own candidates.