And some prominent Democrats have been talking about them as well, including Harry Reid and Bill Clinton. The story of these prominent Republicans meeting with the Koch brothers in secret will be reverberating around the 2014 election cycle until election day itself. There is, however, a bigger, more important story that these tapes tell. They tell us of a debate we must have not only in the 2014 elections but for years to come. What is crystal clear from these tapes and from all the other evidence in terms of the money that Koch-backed groups are spending is that the Kochs now mostly control the Republican Party. Their speakers were some of the most powerful Republicans in the country: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; one of the frontrunners in the 2016 presidential race, Marco Rubio; candidates in four of the most important Senate races in the country, two of the most competitive gubernatorial races, and two of the closest House races; one of the most influential House members, Jim Jordan; and the executive director of the Republican Governors Association. And when you have that kind of line-up, it is clear they could have gotten anyone they wanted in the Republican power structure. As I noted in an earlier blog post, all these high-powered Republicans were very clear how much they owed the Kochs:... In fact, McConnell does know where his Republican Party would be without the Kochs and their network of millionaire and billionaire donors -- nowhere. Saddled with a deeply unpopular economic and social agenda, locked down by a primary electorate that wont allow even occasional forays into moderate policy or rhetoric, crippled by demographic trends that are making their voting base smaller and smaller, Republicans have lost the popular vote six of the last seven presidential elections. Without the Koch money, there would have been no tea party movement or 2010 tidal wave. Without the Koch money, ... huffingtonpost/mike-lux/the-narrative-of-the-koch_b_5850830.html
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 01:36:34 +0000
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