"Now the ‘Koch brothers primary’ goes first to determine who wins the blessing and financial backing of the billionaire class."

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Bernie Sanders Won’t Be Entering the Koch Brothers Primary
By John Nichols, January 24, 2015

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker thanked the crowd of potential 2016 Republican caucus attendees at Saturday’s “Iowa Freedom Summit” for praying for him when he was taking away the collective-bargaining rights of teachers and snowplow drivers and custodians in their neighboring state.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz built his mailing list by telling the crowd of conservative believers to text the word “Constitution” to a cellphone number associated with his campaign.

Dr. Ben Carson got heads spinning with some anti-immigration calculus: “There wouldn’t be people coming here if there wasn’t a magnet… you have to reverse the polarity of that magnet.”

And former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum trumped Carson by explaining that he’s not just bothered by people coming to the United States without proper documentation. “We also have a problem with legal immigration,” declared the guy who won the last round of Republican caucuses in Iowa.

So it went at Saturday’s cursory visit with actual voters by at least ten of the all-but-announced candidates for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination who are not topping the polls in Iowa—or nationally. It was all good theater, but nothing more.

Everyone knew the real action wasn’t in Des Moines on Saturday.

It was in Palm Springs on Sunday.

Yes, Palm Springs in California—which, it should be noted, is not the first-caucus state or the first-primary state or the first-anything state on the 2016 Republican calendar.

Why? It is in Palm Springs that Walker, Cruz, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and Florida Senator Marco Rubio are set to bow and scrape before brothers Charles and David Koch.

The billionaire donors are holding their annual winter gathering of oligarchs at a swank resort that is about as far from Iowa as you can get, and the quartet of Republicans contenders will be begging for their favor.

“Americans used to think Iowa and New Hampshire held the first caucus and primary in the nation every four years. Not anymore,” explains Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.“Now the ‘Koch brothers primary’ goes first to determine who wins the blessing and financial backing of the billionaire class. This is truly sad and shows us how far Citizens United has gone to undermine American democracy.”

Sanders was referencing the five-year-old US Supreme Court ruling that struck down barriers to corporate spending to buy elections—one of a series of decisions that have dramatically increased the influence of not just of corporations but of billionaires like the Koch brothers.

On Wednesday, Sanders introduced a constitutional amendment that would undo the High Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision and a host of other rulings that ushered in an era of billionaire-defined presidential campaigns.

“People across the political spectrum are demanding that billionaires not be able to buy American democracy,” says Sanders, noting that sixteen states and more than 600 communities have called on Congress to begin the process of amending the Constitution to say that money is not speech, corporations are not people and citizens and their elected representatives have a right to organize elections where votes matter more than dollars.

Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate, has been encouraged to seek the presidency in 2016.

Sanders is still in the process of deciding whether to run—and how. Though he has run all of his US House and Senate campaigns as an independent, the Vermonter might enter the Democratic primaries as a challenger to presumed front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Bernie Sanders will not, however, be entering the Koch primary.
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