Tea Party to Sponsor NASCAR

The Hill reports:

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. Just in time for the 2012 election cycle, the Tea Party plans to sponsor a NASCAR racing vehicle.

But not just any vehicle: a Camping World Truck Series truck.

TheTeaParty.net announced Monday that the red No. 89 truck currently driven by Chris Lafferty will be re-dubbed the “We the People’s” truck, in order to tear up the racetrack for the next two seasons.

In a statement, spokesman Todd Cefaretti explained that unlike traditional NASCAR sponsorships,

TheTeaParty.net won’t be paying Lafferty’s racing team, Lafferty Motorsports LLC, for the right to emblazon his car with its logo. Just the opposite.

“Over 50 percent on average of the money that is raised from sponsors for the racing team will be donated to

TheTeaParty.net to be used to advance the Tea Party movement even more.”

Last month, the House voted to preserve the military’s sponsorship of three NASCAR vehicles, to the tune of nearly $40 million, defeating a proposal by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) to ban the sponsorships, which the military argues are effective recruiting tools.