Those wonderful folks who taught the Liberal Party's Cory Bernardi how to politik

From ‘To quarterback behind the scenes, third-party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party:

Figure 1.

Connections between the tobacco industry, third-party allies and the Tea Party, from the 1980's (top) through 2012 (bottom). The thick black line connects CSE with its direct successor organisations. Online supplementary tables S1 and S2 provide more details on the linkages depicted in this figure.

Conclusion

The tobacco companies have created third-party allies, front groups and used public relations firms to foment the appearance of popular public opposition to tobacco control policies for decades. Tea Party strategy and leadership has important roots in these tobacco industry efforts. AFP and FreedomWorks, national organisers of the Tea Party, grew out of CSE, an organisation with strong ties to the tobacco industry. AFP and FreedomWorks continue to mobilise grassroots opposition to tobacco control policies despite the evidence that Tea Party supporters favour such policies. It is important for policy-makers, the health community and people who support the Tea Party to be aware of these complex and often hard-to-track linkages. Rather than being purely a grassroots movement, the Tea Party has been influenced by decades of astroturfing by tobacco and other corporate interests to develop a grassroots network to support their corporate agendas, even though their members may not support those agendas. Greater transparency of organisation funding is needed so that policymakers and the general public—including people who identify with the Tea Party—can evaluate claims of political support for, and opposition to, health and other public policies. It is important for tobacco control advocates, in the USA and internationally, to anticipate and counter Tea Party opposition to tobacco control policies and to ensure that policy makers, the media and the public understand the longstanding intersection between the tobacco industry and the Tea Party policy agenda.

A brief look at South Australian Liberal Senator and former Parliamentary Secretary to Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, Cory Bernardi…..

Herald Sun 19 September 2012:

During a Senate debate yesterday, Senator Bernardi suggested legalising same-sex marriage could lead to demands to legalise bestiality and polygamy.

The Global Mail 21 September 2012:

He’s not just a homophobic, Islamophobic, climate-change denying South Australian senator, he’s an ideological entrepreneur, importing the Tea Party’s ‘astroturf’ techniques and now training others in the faux-grassroots campaigns first cultivated by the American far right….

He's Sarah Palin, without the lipstick. And he's now gone rogue.

News.com.au 28 January 2013:

Senator Bernardi is an international delegate of the American Legislative Exchange Council, an anti-gun control and pro-tobacco group.

The Australian 27 May 2013:

Senator Bernardi is a supporter of Dutch anti-immigration MP Geert Wilders, who toured Australia in February and called for a ban on Muslim migration.