The SeaTimes reports a national GOP-affiliated group just might have massively cheated its own constituency, by running fund-raising mass mailings whose proceeds almost all went to the direct-marketing contractors that sent the letters. Some of the donors were old-age pensioners who sent in most everything they had.

This sort of junk has long occurred throughout the fundraising sphere, not just in political solicitation. Sometimes the supposed recipients are overseas child-feeding programs, or domestic environmental groups. The perpetators sometimes try to get away with it by claiming the solicitation letters contained “voter education” or “public awareness” content, and were hence legitimate beneficiaries of their donors’ money.

One of the most famous direct-mail copywriters is Herschell Gordon Lewis, better known to us in the pop-cult community as a former B-movie director of classic carnival-showman sensibility and sometimes gory storylines. When the big studios muscled in on the splatter-film genre, Lewis took his gift for carny-style theatrics and applied it to direct-response selling.

Lewis was apparently not involved in this particular set of mailings, but it’d be appropriate if he were. With no one left to cheat and lie to, the right has turned to cannibalizing its own base.