Thanks to the SCOTUS ruling on Citizens United v FEC, the Koch brothers will once again wield their enormous power to influence the 2012 elections. Democrats had a chance to pass laws to circumvent the power of the Citizens United decision when they had both houses, but failed to do so.
Politico
In an expansion of their political footprint, the billionaire Koch brothers plan to contribute and steer a total of $88 million to conservative causes during the 2012 election cycle, according to sources, funding a new voter micro-targeting initiative, grass-roots organizing efforts and television advertising campaigns.
In fact, as the annual Conservative Political Action Conference meets this week in Washington and conservatives assess the state of their movement, the Koch network of nonprofit groups, once centered on sleepy free-enterprise think tanks, seems to be emerging as a more ideological counterweight to the independent Republican political machine conceived by Bush-era GOP operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie before the 2010 midterm elections.
The aggressive embrace of political activism by the Koch brothers, Charles and David, has cheered fiscal conservatives, who hope they will reorient the conservative political apparatus around free-market, small government principles and candidates, and away from the electability-over-principles approach they see Rove and Gillespie as embodying.
But not everyone on the right is happy about the brothers’ increasing political profile. Some conservatives complain that the political operatives who work for the Kochs don’t play well with others in the movement and worry that their efforts to steer big money to favored groups undermines other, potentially valuable conservative efforts.
Among leaders of conservative groups “there is the impression that there is a lot of favoritism, not necessarily from the Kochs, but from those the Koch brothers rely on to administer the money, and there are concerns about whether the best groups are being helped, or whether it’s just the groups that they happen to play favorites with,” said Erick Erickson, founder of the influential Red State blog and a CNN political analyst.
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Kay: Actually went to a lecture today by Norm Orenstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (though he himself is more cenetrist). His subject was ‘Broken Governemnt’ and he brought up Citizens United AND this news about the Koch’s and their 88mil. I tried to gauge the reactions of the audience but their faciial expressions didn’t change at all. Either they already knew or they didn’t care. I’d just as soon not know which.
Either they already knew or they didn’t care.
Moe, among most conservatives (Dems and Republicans) the Citizens United ruling was a big score for their side. Capitalism is one of the core principles of conservatism so anything that espouses capitalism (and CU does), then it’s ok with them.
Personally I believe that the CU ruling is unconstitutional but has yet to be challenged. It was won on a First Amendment standard because some time ago corporations were deemed “people” thus, they had the same rights as people. It gives special interests and lobbiest an unprecedented power to shape elections that benefit their interests.
Of course the style of capitalism they so fiercely protect is a perversion of capitalism. Adam Smith, who invented it fer friggin’ sake,forcefully made the point that it must be regulated or it just ‘becomes barbaric”.