First and foremost, let’s be clear, the Koch Brothers are not the monsters that Democrats have made them out to be. They’re not even hard right conservatives but libertarians who have given large donations to many causes even liberals like.
The reason the Kochs have been singled out by the left is that liberals refuse to accept the fact that the Tea Party is a leaderless, grassroots force. They absolutely have to believe that big money is behind it and someone has to be providing those dollars. If you’re anything like me, you’re still waiting for your check from Koch Industries.
Democrats like Harry Reid name the Koch Brothers every time they think someone is listening but unfortunately for them, their boogeyman campaign isn’t working.
As Scott Bland reports at National Journal, most Americans don’t even know who the Koch Brothers are…
Can Democrats’ Koch Attacks Work If Nobody Knows Who They Are?
After absorbing millions of dollars in outside spending from groups connected to the Koch brothers, congressional Democrats have made the conservative billionaires the star villains in a messaging counteroffensive. But a new nonpartisan poll highlights a problem with the plan: A majority of likely 2014 voters have never even heard of the Kochs.
A 52 percent majority of respondents in the new George Washington University Battleground Poll said they had never heard of the Koch brothers, with an additional 11 percent saying they had no opinion of the conservative industrialists. Of the small slice who registered an opinion of the Kochs, 12 percent viewed them favorably and 25 percent viewed them unfavorably. The survey is one of the first to test opinions about the Kochs since they became a big subject of political conversation in the last few years.
The most striking thing about the Democrats’ strategy is the fact that they’ve chosen to attack two private individuals instead of elected officials. At the same time, they want Americans to ignore the millions of dollars pumped into liberal politics by George Soros.
Too bad Democrats can’t run against George W. Bush anymore. They might have to actually make an argument based on their flawed ideas for once.
[Featured image: Al Jazeera English video via The Hill]
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Comments
That’s “Evil Koch Brothers,” of course. A division of Emmanuel Goldstein International (Ltd.).
“They might have to actually make an argument based on their flawed ideas for once.”
Oh, NOS…!!! Except for a very few very safe districts, Collectivists have to run false flag operations every election cycle.
They can’t run on their real ideas. Not in the open.
Great post! A couple of things strike me about this: the first is that Dems work so hard to keep their voters clueless, ignorant, and low-information, and it looks like it’s worked. Heh.
The second is their stubborn refusal to accept that the TEA Party is truly grassroots and not created by millionaire/billionaires. If it was that easy to create a national movement that actually has a major effect on public discourse and elections, they would have succeeded with that Occupy thing they tried. Notice how much money and organization poured into that? And what became of all that investment of time, money, personnel, etc.? Nada. But they ignore this, and I suppose just assume lefties are not as good at organizing and buying “support” as conservatives. Well, they wouldn’t assume that because we all know it’s not true, so they just don’t think about it at all. Typical.
Remember “The Coffee Party”? No?
How ’bout “No Labels”? Anybody?
Precisely. They’ve repeatedly tried to replicate the success of the TEA Party and have failed every time. The model they are using is the one that they have made themselves believe we used; the repeated failures tell them nothing, of course. They just can’t grasp that so many people not only reject their fantasy-based worldview but that we actually care about our founding principles and values. Maybe that’s the key, though? They know that if they went public with their actual worldview they’d have even less support than they do now.
>“They absolutely have to believe that big money is behind it and someone has to be providing those dollars.”
You forget to complete this sentence with, “…because that’s how liberal ‘grassroots’ (read: Astroturf) organizations are funded.”
The Dems wouldn’t bother with them if their name was Smith or Jones … those deviant Dem minds just like saying “Koch”.
The reason the Democrats demonize the Koch brothers is that they are dependent on George Soros, and they want the low information voters to assume that both parties are the same.
LIVs have no idea who Kapo Soros is, and don’t care. The Dems tried to make a great scary bogeyman out of Richard Mellon Scaife once. It didn’t work then, either.
“They’re not even hard right conservatives but libertarians”
Libs are even more afraid of (small L)libertarians as they tend to stick with the small government, individual responsibility, and mind your own business creed.
Don’t assume that because it hasn’t worked yet it will never work. The way repetition works is that at first no one takes note of a name or phrase. Then after they hear it a bunch of times it starts to become a conscious thing.
Liberals have made it economically unwise for conservative businessmen to speak up while liberal businessmen can yap non-stop all day. They actually put pressure on those businessmen while we do not.
We want to win by being chivalrous knights, but if this Koch demonization works (as their general boycott strategies seem to eventually do) stay tuned for all Republican money going away because they will move on to general companies that donate to Republicans and Republican causes. And they will have a nice example to show to those companies.
We are always celebrating little odd victories in the culture I feel, while always losing the war.