There are two important messages in this piece. One is that Wichita’s own Koch Brothers, Charles and David are trying to copy the methods that helped the anti-abortion, so called “pro-life” (for fetuses, not women or their doctors) organizations that learned to take over small offices than no one paid attention to. The anti-abortion groups were able to use those small local offices to pressure higher office politicians and candidates to accept their agenda.
It has been successful for the anti-abortion groups. So it was not surprising that the Koch Brothers, and their many front PACs have tried to use those same tactics.
But the use of big-city mud-slinging tactics doesn’t seem to be helping them win races in all the small places they are trying to take over. The Daily Show covered their lack of success in Coralville, Iowa. Also, this is from Becky Sarwate, Politicus USA;
And this pattern relates similarly to our country’s broken political discourse. The increasingly unproductive, shrill nature of the nation’s legislative branch is yielding a collective estrangement between elected “leaders” and the constituents they are purported to serve. The cynically-minded among us (count me a member of this group) might argue that populist disengagement is one of the explicit goals of some of the more nefarious lobbying groups, who may find it easier to sneak democratically harmful legislation through the back door when no one is looking.
Though it can certainly be argued that the movement toward complete inertia and recklessness at the Federal level has been decades in the making, the situation certainly escalated with the ascension of the Tea Party and its moneyed financial backers. And it’s very possible that no duo has prompted the Tea Party faction to wreak its irresponsible government havoc more than the Koch brothers. The brothers Koch have shielded their patently unpatriotic activities behind the ironically named group, Americans for Prosperity. It has been clear for sometime now that the “prosperity” this concerned body favors begins and ends with corporations, and the top one percent of the nation’s wealth holders.
But while Team Koch has a virtual stranglehold on Washington Republicans, Americans for Prosperity is finding it a bit harder to ram its agenda down the throats of voters at the local level – folks who have suffered in real time at the hands of a low tax, low personal freedom (for minorities, women and the gay community), low job creation agenda.
Monday morning’s edition of The New York Times carried a feature story entitled, Koch Group Has Ambitions in Small Races. At first glance this is a rather dispiriting headline. But a closer read carries a beacon of hope for those wondering when the predatory siblings might get their comeuppance. Writer John Eligon takes a look at the coming local elections in Coralville, Iowa, where voters are preparing to select their next Mayor and City Council members.