The Brains Behind Thom Tillis's Rise To Power

The Battleground Group, which designed and handled the mailing of many of the attack pieces on Democratic members of the North Carolina General Assembly in 2010, is a Sarasota, Florida, hack-shop that proudly displays a nuclear explosion as its logo and "vision thing."

So proud are these guys of the scurrilousness of their 2010 campaign in NC, they proudly display the "NC Case Study" on their homepage.

It didn't take too much browsing in these toxic weeds to find the mailer that they didn't use in 2010, one targeting Cullie Tarleton for allegedly applauding rape. (WARNING: Clicking that link will show you just how vile these people are.) If they had used that mailer against Cullie, they would have used it against every other targeted Democrat in 2010. Notice that the return address on the mailer is the state Republican Party Executive Committee, the same return address that was on all of the Battleground Group-produced mailers (of which there were dozens mailed against each Democrat in 2010).

It's interesting to speculate on why they didn't actually use the mailer, since the ones they did use were every bit as below-the-belt. Did someone in the NC Republican Party actually take a look at this and blanch: "Oh my God. We can't have our name on that!" But their name IS on that, and worse. And it's clear from the Battleground Group's NC Case Study that they were behind the push-polling and the other mailers that flooded our mailboxes (including one that warned us that murderers and rapists looking very Hispanic were moving next door to us, thanks to Steve Goss and Cullie Tarleton).

This is the nastiness that the Battleground Group is proud to offer to all deep pockets coming their way. This is the nastiness that the NC Republican Party was willing to put their name on. This is the nastiness that elevated Tantrum Thom to the Speakership of the NC House. This is the nastiness that we will see no end to, as 2012 grinds into gear. This is the nasty essence of the abuse of power that has now taken over our state and will hold whatever midnight seances it needs to punish their enemies and advance their extremist goals.

Hattip: JP