The Limits of Koch-Bashing
Disparaging the conservative activists won't change voters' minds in 2014.
By Susan Milligan, March 14, 2014
If President Obama is the devil incarnate for Republicans, Democrats have found their own version of the antichrist: the Koch brothers.
David and Charles Koch have been a cash-powerful thorn in the side of Democrats for some time, successfully bankrolling conservative causes and making good use of the Citizens United decision allowing them to throw pots of cash at various political enterprises without limits. But will complaining about the Kochs make the difference in a single campaign?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has been on a tear about the Koch team, most recently accusing it of holding up a critical aid package for the shaky new government in Ukraine. Reid tied the rich brothers to an effort in the Senate to add a provision delaying the IRS’ regulation of nonprofit political advocacy groups to the aid bill. Reid said on the Senate floor, "It’s hard for me to comprehend how with a clear conscience they could say, ‘Ukrainians, we probably can’t help you because we’re trying to protect the Koch brothers,’ And not only that, they’re saying to the American people that protecting the Koch brothers is more important than helping our country."
Powerful stuff, and he has a point. The bickering over the IRS regulation – which is not remotely connected to the crisis on the Crimean peninsula – means that Congress will not get an aid package in place before recessing, and not before a Sunday vote, already derided by the West, to determine if Crimea will join Russia or stay attached to Ukraine. It looks pretty bad for the U.S., holding itself up as a beacon of democracy and leadership, to fail to accomplish something as basic as a loan guarantee package because of unrelated feuding over domestic politics.
This isn't the first shot Democrats have taken at the Kochs, whom the party has accused of using their vast amounts of cash to mislead people about the impact of the Affordable Care Act as well as other shifty campaigns. But to what end?
Will anyone really change his or her vote based on disclosures about the Koch brothers? Anyone who even knows the identity and reputation of the Koch brothers is probably politically involved enough to have already made a decision about state and congressional district races. Pointing out the influence of the Kochs is not going to direct someone’s vote.
The same is largely true for using President Obama to defeat (or, less likely this year, to elect) Democratic congressional candidates. The voters who despise Obama aren’t voting for Democratic candidates anyway. The voters who like Obama aren’t voting for the Republicans. And the voters who might have voted for Obama but are a little frustrated with him right now aren’t going to make a decision about a congressional race to punish the administration for a poor rollout of the Affordable Care Act. They may, indeed, vote against an incumbent who voted for the law, if they are sufficiently upset about it (and even there, the numbers are misleading – as House Assistant Minority Leader Steny Hoyer rightly points out, of the 51 percent in a recent poll who oppose the law, 11 percent don’t like it because it doesn’t go far enough). But that’s not the same thing as making any race a referendum on a president who is never again running for public office.
The Kochs are a powerful team, and the Democrats are wise to battle them – in rhetoric, if not dollar-for-dollar. But it’s not going to make the difference in a congressional election.
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David and Charles Koch have been a cash-powerful thorn in the side of Democrats for some time, successfully bankrolling conservative causes and making good use of the Citizens United decision allowing them to throw pots of cash at various political enterprises without limits. But will complaining about the Kochs make the difference in a single campaign?
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has been on a tear about the Koch team, most recently accusing it of holding up a critical aid package for the shaky new government in Ukraine. Reid tied the rich brothers to an effort in the Senate to add a provision delaying the IRS’ regulation of nonprofit political advocacy groups to the aid bill. Reid said on the Senate floor, "It’s hard for me to comprehend how with a clear conscience they could say, ‘Ukrainians, we probably can’t help you because we’re trying to protect the Koch brothers,’ And not only that, they’re saying to the American people that protecting the Koch brothers is more important than helping our country."
Powerful stuff, and he has a point. The bickering over the IRS regulation – which is not remotely connected to the crisis on the Crimean peninsula – means that Congress will not get an aid package in place before recessing, and not before a Sunday vote, already derided by the West, to determine if Crimea will join Russia or stay attached to Ukraine. It looks pretty bad for the U.S., holding itself up as a beacon of democracy and leadership, to fail to accomplish something as basic as a loan guarantee package because of unrelated feuding over domestic politics.
This isn't the first shot Democrats have taken at the Kochs, whom the party has accused of using their vast amounts of cash to mislead people about the impact of the Affordable Care Act as well as other shifty campaigns. But to what end?
Will anyone really change his or her vote based on disclosures about the Koch brothers? Anyone who even knows the identity and reputation of the Koch brothers is probably politically involved enough to have already made a decision about state and congressional district races. Pointing out the influence of the Kochs is not going to direct someone’s vote.
The same is largely true for using President Obama to defeat (or, less likely this year, to elect) Democratic congressional candidates. The voters who despise Obama aren’t voting for Democratic candidates anyway. The voters who like Obama aren’t voting for the Republicans. And the voters who might have voted for Obama but are a little frustrated with him right now aren’t going to make a decision about a congressional race to punish the administration for a poor rollout of the Affordable Care Act. They may, indeed, vote against an incumbent who voted for the law, if they are sufficiently upset about it (and even there, the numbers are misleading – as House Assistant Minority Leader Steny Hoyer rightly points out, of the 51 percent in a recent poll who oppose the law, 11 percent don’t like it because it doesn’t go far enough). But that’s not the same thing as making any race a referendum on a president who is never again running for public office.
The Kochs are a powerful team, and the Democrats are wise to battle them – in rhetoric, if not dollar-for-dollar. But it’s not going to make the difference in a congressional election.
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