Charles Koch Owes Me 15 Million Dollars

Because the Washington Post's op-ed page is apparently not already larded up with enough war criminals, Bush regime dead-enders and Beltway Both Siderist grifters, gthis week Fred Hiatt decided to throw Conservative supervillain, Charles Koch, a freebie.

And it should surprise no one that what Koch had to say was absolutely indistinguishable from anything that could have rolled off the David Brooks Both Sides Do It --

It’s not just up to policy. Leaders must empower people, too.

The political season is upon us, and candidates are working hard to differentiate themselves. Yet politicians from both major parties largely agree on two key points.

-- pablum assembly line --

Republicans and Democrats generally want to solve this crisis by relying on top-down solutions — grand plans done to people rather than inclusive projects done by people. While the options offered by the two parties often take divergent paths, many end up in the same place. Socialism, protectionism, nationalism, populism — ideas increasingly advocated on both the left and right rest on the troubling assumption that the stroke of a politician’s pen can turn the country around...

-- on any given day --

For several years, we supported efforts in partisan politics with the goal of moving the United States forward. The results fell far short of what we considered acceptable. Worse, partisan efforts on both sides have made it harder to come together as a country. That’s why we’ve dramatically changed how we engage in the political process, having asked the question “What’s possible through partisanship?” 

The answer: not much.

-- in the past 20 years.

In case you missed it, this hollow, shallow, libertarian-ghouls-cloaked-in-civic-virtue claptrap is what a Conservative lifeboat the size of the Symphony of the Seas sounds like when it hits the water.  Because it is fair to say that no one has done more more to underwrite the long, grotesque transformation of the Party of Lincoln into the Party of Jefferson Davis than Charles and David Koch.

From Salon, April 24, 2018:

The Kochtopus is extending its tentacles

Koch money goes into all sorts of foundations, business lobbying groups, dark-money groups and higher-education

...
The Koch brothers understood early on that they would need to invest millions of dollars (their combined wealth is over $120 billion) over many years to package, perfume and surreptitiously push their unpopular anti-majority ideas on the public. Transforming their inherited fossil fuel fortune into Koch Industries, they freely tap this revenue directly and massively to finance their political agenda. And because that money is privately held, much of that spending is not publicly revealed.
...

And it's not just the brothers themselves at play here. The Koch-affiliated web of gazillionaire allies, The Seminar Network, aims to unite "the country's top business and philanthropic leaders behind a shared commitment to a . . . free and open society." When some 500 donors gathered at a posh resort in January, Charles Koch boasted: "We've made more progress in the last five years than I had in the previous 50. . . . The capabilities we have now can take us to a whole new level." The network has pledged to spend an additional $400 million on the 2018 elections . . . including elections at the local and state levels.

And that's just for this year's elections. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Koch money goes into all sorts of foundations, business lobbying groups, dark-money groups, higher-education and high school groups (to promote the Koch worldview), astroturf groups like Americans for Prosperity, legislative bill mills like American Legislative Exchange Council that write pro-corporate legislation for states, think tanks (American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute and State Policy Network) and much, much more...

So what caused the head of the Koch Hydra to pivot from this --

"We've made more progress in the last five years than I had in the previous 50. . . . The capabilities we have now can take us to a whole new level" 

-- to this --

For several years, we supported efforts in partisan politics with the goal of moving the United States forward. The results fell far short of what we considered acceptable. Worse, partisan efforts on both sides have made it harder to come together as a country. 

-- in just one year?

Two things.

First, ever since David Koch got his teeth kicked in running for VP on the Libertarian Party ticket, the Koch's have prefered to conduct their treason quietly, in small rooms, behind heavy doors.  However, while Trump is irrefutably a creation of the Koch-funded Republican party, he turned out to be a monster they could not control: a monster who is idolized by the party the Koch's created precisely because he blabs everything and Says The Quiet Part Loud.

The GOP base loves being told by their Dear Leader that, after decades of hiding their rage and racism and paranoia behind the smallest of fig leafs, they should stop being ashamed of what they are, come out of the Koch Kloset, embrace their Inner Klansmen and live their lives as the out-and-proud bigots and brown-shirts they have always dreamed of being.

This creates an intolerable paradox for shadow-dwelling villains like the Kochs.

And second, getting their asses kicked around the block and back again in 2018 was not part of the plan.  The traditional Koch political transaction is very simple: "I pay you a shit-ton of money, and you bring be victories".  But in 2018, they may as well have set fire to a half a billion dollars in the public square for all the good it did them.  And so, like every other disgraced Conservative who has run out of Republican runway before they ran out of ideological ambition, the Koch's are now using their mighty war chest to stake out a Texas-sized claim in the chump-rich but already-crowded Unite Murrica/ Third Way/ No Labels / Centrist Project/ Purple: Project for Democracy / Problem Solver Caucus / Niskanen Center / Howard-Schultz-to-Steve-Schmidt Fund Transfer Project territory.

However there is a fairly large monkey in this particular wrench.

You see, however much Charles Koch may croon the Beltway's favorite ballad of The Extremes on Both Sides, publicly available FEC information shows that Charles Koch personally has done nothing but throw great gobs of money at only one side.  At the Party of Bigots and Imbeciles (as Ken Vogel Ruthlessly!Doxxed! on Twitter yesterday):

CHARLES KOCH, in @WashingtonPost op-ed today: "Partisan efforts on both sides have made it harder to come together as a country." https://t.co/dBJ3AGR8tv

CHARLES KOCH, in @FEC filings: $15M in donations to @GOP candidates, committees & PACs that support them since 2011. pic.twitter.com/yKT7GxtoME

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) August 14, 2019

I presume this extremely obvious glitch in the Koch's scheme to blame Both Sides and scamper towards the Fake Center never occurred to them because when you're multi-billionaires living at the center of a self-created constellation of stooges and yes-men, who is there to tell you that you're about to very publicly shit the bed on the op-ed page of the Washington Post?

But I have a solution.

All the Kochs have to do is throw .01% of their net worth -- something in the neighborhood of 15 million dollars -- at some avowedly partisan Liberal outfit.  One that proudly and publicly believes the GOP to be an unsalvageable shitpile of bigots and imbeciles.

They can make checks payable to "The Professional Left", P.O. Box 9133, Springfield, IL, 62791. 

We also take PayPal, Patreon, and good old fashioned cash.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Then wait a few weeks.

Then declare that "partisan efforts on both sides" have failed Murrica because you have personally tried both flavors and neither is to your liking.

Then, go nuts.  Set fire to another half a billion to fund yet another Third Way flop house where Republicans on the run from being Republicans can dress up as "independents" for awhile and have coffee and cake and dry-hump each other until the coast is clear.  Because for the plutocrats who fund these things, that is always the real end-game.