The surviving Koch brother billionaire recently declared war on Trumpworld, as reported by PJ Media’s Rick Moran:
Charles Koch — David died in 2019 — is once again looking to make his imprint on Republican politics. Not only is AFP going to back GOP candidates Koch thinks can win in the primaries, but the organization has made crystal clear that it will back a GOP presidential candidate who can “turn the page” on the past,” according to the AFP memo released on Saturday.
The Koch machine — a massive, labyrinthine “maze of money” — wields enormous power in party primary politics, spending massive sums on advertising and events to prop up favored candidates or, in the case of Trump, defeat those who fall out of their graces.
Most Republicans rely on Koch money to succeed — 2016 Donald Trump being a major exception to the rule based on his unique populist appeal. Koch industries funneled over $20,000,000 in the off-year 2022 midterm cycle through its “nonprofit” Americans For Prosperity alone so its candidates could deliver in the form of more favorable policies to multinational corporations like Koch Industries once they assume office. The U.S. government is for sale.
Obviously, this kind of cash “donation” — we used to call them “bribes” — far outstrips that of the average voter ($2,900 per candidate being the federal individual limit), making a mockery of the “one man, one vote” allegedly sacred to Our Democracy™.
Is campaign cash (bribes) merely constitutionally protected free speech? The Supreme Court, via its Citizens United v FEC ruling, thinks so, and so do many “conservative” intellectual think tanks, the de facto avant-garde of conservative thought.
The Koch machine and similarly ideologically positioned organizations brand themselves as “conservative.” But what “conservative” means probably depends on the context, whom one asks, and what their interests are.
What’s being conserved? Multinational corporations’ sacred inalienable right to influence, if not outright control, the purportedly democratic process?
Even if you don’t mind an open conspiracy by uber-elites bundling their money to hire politicians/prostitutes (another semantics issue), another issue that should concern conservatives is that the population becomes hostages to their pet social engineering fetishes.
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One thing I’ve always respected about Trump — despite my substantial criticisms — is the enemies he’s made of the ruling political class. The “fascist” label carelessly foisted upon him by the liberal class — beyond being palpable hyperbole — is all the more absurd because Trump always operated outside of the good graces of the power structure — even when he occupied the Oval Office. Time Magazine elaborately detailed how the Deep State activated to defeat Trump in 2020 — in other words, a silent technocratic coup. We saw the results.
The locus of true power in the U.S. corporate state is the centralized, permanent technocracy. It’s the Eye of Sauron. Despite corporate media fearmongering, Trump is not now and has never been a power center beyond whatever power massive grassroots support confers — and, if the Koch overlords have their druthers, he won’t ever reach it. He slipped by electorally in the general after crushing the primaries, at both stages fully opposed by the neoliberal power structure and, in the latter, opposed by his own party’s mega-donors (which many Republicans would rather gloss over).
Trump had and has widespread populist support, but the bipartisan Deep State has a near-total media monopoly, a weaponized surveillance state with an accompanying censorship regime, and Koch cash to burn.
