On July 20, hours after the horrific shooting in Aurora, Colorado, the Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama sent an email to supporters with the subject line "OUTRAGEOUS: Media Tries to Blame Tea Party for Colorado Shooting."

"We can't let the media get away with their attempts to smear the tea party," the email read, with a link to a Breitbart.com story claiming ABC News "tried to falsely blame the tea party for the Colorado massacre." (What actually happened is that in the scramble to ID the killer, ABC briefly noted it had found a profile of a man on a Tea Party website with the same name as the shooter and in the same city.) "Please help us fight back by supporting the most prominent tea party candidate in America right now -- conservative Republican Ted Cruz. CLICK HERE to CONTRIBUTE."