Montara hosts big-name Tea Party fundraiser

There are many reasons I am grateful I no longer live in in Maricopa County—but America’s Sheriff Joe Arapaio is a big one. He’s part of the Three Joe’s (sic) touring company that touched down in Montara this evening for a Tea Party fundraiser.  This will be the first and last time Montara makes the Daily Kos.

“Sheriff” Joe Arpaio is apparently sanguine enough in his recent thrilling victory over an unarmed chicken farmer that he will be defil^H^H^H^H^Hvisiting Montara, CA, tomorrow (2011-03-24) as one of the featured speakers at an anti-Obama fundraiser.

Literally, that’s what it is: “...the launch of the historic effort to Defeat Barack Obama,” organized by the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, whose director is Howard Kaloogian, who you may remember as the guy who posted a photo of a quiet street in Istanbul, Turkey, and claimed it was from liberated Baghdad.

The event is entitled, “Evening with The Joes.” Arpaio’s co-guests are Joe Miller—the Alaskan teabagger who lost his US Senate bid to Lisa Murkowski’s write-in campaign—and Not-Joe the Not-Plumber (Samuel J. Wurzelbacher). Yes, all top-shelf. No expense has been spared. VIP-level admission to the event is $2012.00. (Oh, I see what you did there…)

The depths of Arpaio’s moral bankruptcy are expressed with surprising succinctness in his interview with Joe Garofoli. He blows all the right-wing and Tea Party dog whistles, and does so with malignant glee.  He also dares protesters to show up and get in his face.

Still, the more I think about this, the more ridiculous it sounds. They’re flying in three guys to the San Francisco Bay Area to hold a fundraiser, but don’t hold it in the City proper, where it would be much more convenient. Instead, they drive all the way down to Montara (over Devil’s Slide, no less) to hold it in the middle of what will be a mud field if the weather forecasts pan out. Admittedly $2012.00 is fiddling small change as far as Republican fundraisers go, but still, you’d think they could have scored a ballroom at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero or something…