Our glibertarian friends like to tell us that the Koch brothers really aren’t Republicans, they’re just into spreading liberty and freedom and promoting limited government and fiscal responsibility. Ahem:
Charles and David Koch, the billionaire owners of of Koch Industries, are known as big spenders when it comes to lobbying and influencing public policy. Now, a new document filed with the IRS reveals how the Koch political machine funneled over $54.5 million in previously undisclosed funds to a litany of front groups designed to smear Democrats.
The disclosure suggests that a very wide variety of Republican groups active in the last major election, from pro-life organizations that ran ads on abortion to shadowy fronts that aired partisan commercials with the infamous Ground Zero Mosque conspiracy, have been highly dependent on Koch money. The document also reveals that the Koch’s political network spent much more on electing the current Congress than previously known.
***– The American Future Fund, which received $12,965,000 from the Center, ran ads that helped to defeat Democratic incumbents including John Spratt (D-SC), Mark Schauer (D-MI), Bobby Bright (D-AL), Chet Edwards (D-TX), Phil Hare (D-IL), Baron Hill (D-IN), and Travis Childers (D-MS). As we’ve noted, the group is also responsible for an ad campaign that hit Democrats for supporting a New York mosque at Ground Zero, allegedly built to honor the terrorists’ victory on 9/11. In reality, the ads misquoted the lawmakers, and the mosque in question was a planned community center headed by a cleric who has worked for the government, including the Bush administration, for years to promote peace.
– The 60 Plus Association, which received $11,625,000 from the Center, runs aggressive ads against Democrats in both the House and Senate. The group was set up as a Republican response to the AARP. In 2010, the 60 Plus Association blanketed the nation with ads that charged that Democrats had “betrayed” seniors by passing health reform and cut Medicare.
– The Susan B. Anthony List, which received $1,025,000 from the Center, ran ads in 2010 accusing Democrats of funding “overseas abortions” and passing a health care bill that “requires Americans” to finance abortions (a claim labeled false by experts). The group, which spent over $11 million two years ago, even ran pro-life attack ads against Democrats who oppose abortion rights. Other forced pregnancy groups financed by the Center include Nebraska Right to Life, Concerned Women 4 America, and Americans United for Life Action. Americans United for Life Action received $559,000.
– Though most Center-funded groups focused on federal elections, one group, Protect Your Vote Inc., which received $100,000, was set up to undermine efforts to draw fair congressional districts in Florida.
– The Fund also provided grants to a number of Tea Party advocacy groups, including the Tea Party Patriots, the Institute for Liberty, and Americans for Prosperity.
How many times do the Koch brothers have to exposed for what they are (Birchers), before glibertarians will stop defending them?
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
This assumes that being exposed for Birchers would be sufficient in and of itself for glibertarians to stop defendnig them.
Baud
How many times do the glibertarians have to exposed for what they are (Republicans), before you will stop pretending they’re anything else?
cathyx
The Supreme Court has ruled that they are allowed to spend as much money to influence elections as they want. The Koch Brothers can’t help it if politicians are easy to influence.
eldorado
when the checks stop clearing
Jeff Spender
This is the wrong question. The right question to ask is what are we going to do about it? Obviously, glibertarians don’t care.
Most people don’t even know what the John Birch Society is, as far as I can tell.
That means it is up to us.
Killjoy
@eldorado: This.
taylormattd
John, there is no such thing as a libertarian. Your former friends are not libertarians. They are republicans who like to smoke weed.
Jewish Steel
Cue the Radley waterworks.*
*I think I stole this line from Freddie.
Bubblegum Tate
Yes, but George Soros. So, you know…both sides.
Baud
And who has libertarian friends anyway?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
1) When it affects them directly.
2) When it’s no longer good for business.
Polish the Guillotines
If this were late 18th century France, and we were Jacobins… well, the script writes itself.
Jeff Spender
@Baud:
I have libertarian…er…annoyances. I mean, if they were normal people I’d call them friends, but everything with them comes down to some sort of contract.
They take personal relationships and build an economy out of them. It’s so fucking bizarre.
“I did this, so you owe me.”
“You offered your help freely without any stipulations, so I owe you nothing.”
True story.
bcinaz
“How many times do the Koch brothers have to exposed for what they are (Birchers), before glibertarians will stop defending them?”
Gosh, I don’t know John; How long is a piece of string?
Face it. It’s so easy for the Kochs because the people who tolerate/revere them already buy into the idea that there is only one kind of ‘Freedom’. They are unable to see their lives as a form of indentured servitude – working for benefits, or a pension, or staying in some under paying job they hate because ‘Freedom’ nearly destroyed the world, and good paying jobs are scarce.
Republican brains are wired differently. That’s why you had to get out, your brain could not deal with the lying, stealing, cheating, cognitive dissonance.
MattF
I’d add, though, that the Koch brothers and their ilk have no particular love for ‘Republicans’ defined as a conservative party in a two-party system. They just want whut they want, and if you’re in their way, well,…
Polish the Guillotines
@MattF: This.
WereBear
@Jeff Spender: I believe it. I have such mercenary “acquaintances” and before my political enlightenment reached its peak, I simply considered them to be maturationally deficient. Well, actually, I still do.
I don’t get the Koch brothers. If I were that rich, I’d kick back and get a crack at reading every book every written, while lying in a hammock with a pitcher of Dark ‘n’ Stormies close at hand. I’d endow a chain of cat shelters with my name on it, while underwriting a lot of liberal causes; dang. I guess that’s why I’m not a crazy billionaire.
Unqualified.
texascowgirl
Do we have any billionaires on our side? And where the hell are they?
The Rmoney campaign raised nearly as much money as the Obama campaign last month. It would be bad enough with them being at parity, but with rich right wingers putting in hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2012 campaign, the Democrats are going to get blown out on the spending front. They can run the air war while Rmoney spends his money on the ground. Seriously why can’t our side do what they are doing? Or do we not have enough rich people to do it? Can’t we have at least one SuperPAC?
geg6
@MattF:
THIS. That is simply truth.
c u n d gulag
@Bubblegum Tate:
Yes, did you know that Soros spends TRILLIONS of dollars a year on the Lefty Commie Pinko Democrats.
T-R-I-L-L-I-O-N-S!
‘S true!
I read it on a rightie site!
geg6
@texascowgirl:
I think you are overestimating the organizational abilities of both the crazy billionaires and the Rmoney campaign. I’ve been working the ground for Obama’s campaign for months. There is not even a ghost of a whisper about a similar Rmoney effort here. None. I think they are going to go all out on huge ad buys, their strategy for the primaries. I don’t think they understand the ground game, not the campaign and certainly not the crazy billionaires
Redshift
One thing I’ve wondered — the Koch brothers are 72 and 76. Anyone know if the next generation shares their devotion to the cause? I know there are a bunch of right-wing billionaires, but none of the others appear as dedicated to funding multiple shadowy and deceptively-named front groups.
Frankensteinbeck
They’re not Republicans, and they’re not libertarians, and they’re not Birchers, except in the sense that they’ve coopted all three already tightly linked groups. They’re lunatic conspiracy theorists who are willing to spend gigantic money on politics because that’s the only way to stave off the destruction of the United States by socialists. Not ‘we want to expand government services’ socialists like modern Republicans describe, but 1920s style revolutionary anarcho-socialists who bomb churches and want to destroy all existing governments and slaughter the rich. The Kochs are obsessed with a group of people who haven’t really existed since before they were born, but their father viewed as his arch-nemeses. They are fucked up. A prime example that even rich people are not logical.
Svensker
As a former glibertarian who always voted Republican, I have to say that I really believed that fiscal issues/low taxes were critical to freedom and that nothing else — all the war stuff, the homophobia, race-baiting, etc., etc. — was as important. So I loathed the Republicans but preferred them over the Dems whom I thought were not only loathsome but dangerous.
When I woke up from my decades long coma I realized none of this made sense but, at the time, it seemed to fit into what I considered a rational worldview.
It’s a cult. You can’t argue facts with cultists.
Linda Featheringill
@texascowgirl:
We, the Dems, may not have as much money but I think we exhibit more brains in how to use it. I’ve watched some of these bigwigs spend very large amounts of money to produce things that won’t be very helpful.
One of the problems they have, I think, is that some of the bigwigs think they know everything and they don’t want anybody telling them what to do. So they come across as a bunch of amateurs. Which they are.
Will it matter? Dunno.
Jeff Spender
@texascowgirl:
I think what we really need to do is build a time traveling device to go back in time.
What would we do back in time?
We would stop the assassination of Alexander Hamilton.
I have no idea what that would do, but it might be interesting. Let’s put a blank in Aaron Burr’s gun. See what happens.
JPL
@c u n d gulag: What’s in for them? Soros has promoted democracy, entertainers are just entertainers and the Koch brothers want what for their money?
Of course they want the right to pollute and the right to rid the country of medicaid that treats children with asthma caused by their pollution.
I actually mentioned this to a right wing friend.
texascowgirl
@geg6:
I hope you are right. I’m in Texas which is not a contested state so it’s hard to tell what’s happening at the micro level. I think Obama was helped a lot by the fact that McCain couldn’t match him in the money race and had to pull back from states like Michigan because of it. Hopefully, whatever money Rmoney he has, he won’t spend it wisely and the SuperPACs will find they have only so much airtime they can buy.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jeff Spender:
This is because glibertarians are actually neo-feudalists, just like the Koch Brothers. And neo-feudalism has a lot in common with fascism.
We learned in WWII how to deal with these types.
Jeff Spender
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m naturally opposed to violence. But when someone tries to take from others and subjugate them–grab the rifles.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jeff Spender:
This is an indication that they don’t begin to understand how society functions.
“Debt” is a concept that predates capitalism, and predates money itself. It’s a moral concept, which is why libertarians, who are amoral, can’t grasp.
Cermet
@Svensker: You are really a rather smart dude to figured that out after so long drinking the kool aid – my hat is off to you. Was there a single thing that turned you away from the dark side like good old John Cole or was it a move after a thousand cuts? Still, you give me hope that there is a cure for that illness called re-thug-ism!
Redshift
@texascowgirl: Believe it. The Obama campaign already has 85 offices in Virginia, and has people out registering voters every weekend and phone banking constantly to contact voters and recruit volunteers. I haven’t heard of Romney doing anything here but the occasional fundraiser or speech.
There were a lot of stories from the primaries about how he had his team of experts who would come in and whip the local organization into shape (endearing them to local party folks, I’m sure) and then after the primary… leave. It’ll be fascinating to see them try to do that in multiple states at once after the convention.
Cermet
@Jeff Spender: Sorry but that wouldn’t have worked – Alexander Hamilton discharged his weapon into the air trying to prove the duel was not needed. Burr would have quickly reloaded and killed him, anyway. You would need to take a scoped rifle and …
Chris
@geg6:
Isn’t Karl Rove running the Romney campaign? Doesn’t HE, at least, know better?
Redshift
Hee, hee! There’s an ad from Townhall over on TPM asking you to vote in an online VP poll, and the three images are Condi Rice, Allen West, and Donald Trump.
Ben Wolf
@Villago Delenda Est: You know, I often make the effort to reach out to libertarians, because according to the definition (one who supports maximized individual liberties) I am a libertarian. But again and again I find that so many aren’t really concerned with “freedom”, just freedom from the state. What they really seem to champion is tranferrence of authority from government to powerful interests in the private sector, not minimizing the power of authorities wherever they may be. They want an overlord they can own stock in rather than a system whereby the mob they sneer at can choose their own leaders, and oddly enough the end result would be that libertarians end up with disproportionate power over the lives of those without sufficient capital to buy a stake in the decision-making process.
Jeff Spender
@Cermet:
Damn. It’s been so long since I’ve actually read about it that I completely forgot. I just remember Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr got into a duel and Burr won.
Well, talk about failure.
Redshift
@Chris:
I don’t think Rove was ever much of a ground-game guy, just attack ads, dirty tricks, and voter suppression. And he’s not actually running the Romney campaign, he’s running the outside money group that’s focused on, surprise!, attack ads, shadowy front groups, and voter suppression (and probably dirty tricks, but I don’t think those have come to light yet.)
Jeff Spender
@Redshift:
I think people vastly overestimate Rove’s abilities.
BarbCat
@efgoldman: We have Obama to thank for a strong ground game. Nod to Howard Dean. The GOP ALWAYS had an excellent GOTV effort, until 2008. The 2004 Kerry Campaign in NV was underwhelmingness incarnate.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ben Wolf:
There’s the problem. Inevitably, there are going to be conflicts between individuals’ liberties. That’s when things get dicey. I’m for maximized individual liberty, too, but I understand it can’t happen in a stratified society, be the stratification social, or economic, or both. Libertarians miss this point every single time.
Redshift
@Ben Wolf: Apparently as long as your freedom is being suppressed by someone else exercising their freedom, that’s okay. (Which I guess is why so many of them deny that possibility; “my freedom never conflicts with anyone else’s, so we don’t need a mechanism to resolve that” is pretty much the fundamental fallacy of libertarianism.)
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
This.
People often seem to divide the conservatives between a “base” of naive, ignorant or crazy voters, and the “elites,” the self-interested geniuses manipulating the poor rubes for their own ends. Absent this interpretation is the fact that the people with the big bucks are often just as insane and unable to grasp reality as the people whose votes they “manipulate.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift:
That’s the classic fallacy. Locally, here in Lane County Oregon, we’ve got a conflict between some guys who want to level a butte for the rock (so they can use it in support of a railroad project elsewhere in the state) and local homeowners who are having their lives disrupted by the noise and dust the butte leveling requires. Not to mention disrupting the scenery of the area, which directly impacts on the property values of the locals. It’s a riff on the classic rendering plant next door to a residence problem. Two cases of property rights in unavoidable conflict. So, I guess for the libertarians, the solution is whoever has the most money, wins, and too bad for the other side.
Freedom, my ass. None dare call it tyranny.
Polish the Guillotines
@Jeff Spender:
Rove, included.
Jeff Spender
@Redshift:
This. They really don’t seem to understand that, inevitably, people’s interests are going to come into conflict. I get the feeling that, in that case, the mentality that would rule the day would be the person left standing is the winner.
Man, to be so divorced from reality. Must be nice.
murakami
I’ll offer one defense of Birchers: they took more of a stand against endless wars and torture than the Democrats did during the dark ages of Bush.
That’s not exactly a thrilling defense of either the Birchers nor much praise for the Democrats but there it is.
As for Libertarians, they’re not always stoned Republicans masturbating to the dirty scenes in Atlas Shrugged. Some of them come from a more leftist perspective. Those people just barely tolerate guys with the gold fetishes, ranting about taxes as the greatest of all evils, etc., and embrace the libertarian movement because this movement is the only party that will call out the drug war for the nonsense that it is. Democrats and Republicans, as a whole, won’t do that. The libertarians were ferociously against the wars, strongly against the US’s ridiculous relationship with Israel, and were highlighting and attacking police power abuses while the rest of the media ignored the situation.
There are plenty of social issues which would tempt someone to Libertarianism. I should know because I drank the koolaid for a while. But I’m still sympathetic to the men and women who hang out in the movement, and put up with the sweaty tax-phobic neckbeards, because they see it as their only hope to fixing some of the domestic and foreign abuses of power by the government.
(Though maybe most of those people have migrated to Occupy and related movements by now. I would hope so.)
Chris
@Ben Wolf:
QFT.
Liberals are pro-individual rights, libertarians are anti-government.
Baud
@murakami:
Some Republicans are pro-choice. At some point, they really stop mattering.
True, but Dems are further along than the GOP, yet most libertarians skew Republican.
WereBear
Because they are not about freedom and civil rights so much as they are about their freedom and civil rights.
Baud
@WereBear:
I’ll take them at their word and assume that they would be consistently anti-government if they had their way. But none of us has our way, and we have to make choices. Libertarians seem to predominantly choose Republican, which says something about their priorities.
Uncle Cosmo
@Cermet: Don’t give Burr a blank, replace the shot & charge with the equivalent weight in 20th-century high explosive & detonator. He’d have been hard put to reload while his second was furiously trying to tourniquet the arm below his mangled hand. And it would’ve served the mofo right.
Chris
@Baud:
Well, it’s kind of hard to judge, because while I’ve met some people who are honest and all-around libertarians, most of the people who use that label are really just garden-variety liberals or (more often) conservatives with a trendier label (also a label that allows them to disassociate themselves from the major parties and all the messy reality-based stuff that goes with them).
“Oh, maaann, I’m totally a libertarian because I’m very committed to the government getting out of X, Y and Z.”
“Yet you’re okay with the government involving itself in A, B and C?”
“Well, A, B and C are really important.”
“Okay, but then you’re not a libertarian.”
fuckwit
The only people on the right who understand ground game seem to be:
1) Anti-sex crusade fanatics
and
2) Ron Paul Revolluuuution!
Those guys have got ground game, within their own niches. But on a larger scale than that? I don’t think so.
The Rethug big money boys just know how to run attack ads and exploit groups (1) and (2) above as the useful idiots they are.
Ground game does not work on a large scale for oligarchs. Ground game is the antithesis of oligarchy. Ground game means you involve and engage EVERYONE in an inclusive, positive, democratic way. That’s just not the Rethug way.
This is why Rethugs focus so hard on voter suppression. Anything that keeps ordinary, decent people from voting, keeps Rethugs in power.
Anything that engages ordinary people on a large scale means wins for Democrats.
suzanne
@murakami:
I, too, drank the Koolaid when I was sixteen. But for all the railing against the drug war, and anti-war stuff (about which they are right), I see NOTHING in terms of concern for women, or racial minorities, or anyone else who isn’t a middle-class white dude.
I could even see them as reasonable if they were as vehement about developing a shared sense of personal morality (that has nothing to do with government) as they are about bitching about taxes.
The social contract is a far superior philosophical construct.
Chuck Butcher
As long as we’re talking about freedom
Chris
@fuckwit:
Anti-sex crusade fanatics, yes (it helps to have the infrastructure already all laid out for you, all you need is the churches), but Ron Paul Revolution? These guys make a ton of noise on account of all the young activists, but they’ve got a pretty shitty record when it comes to actually winning votes. It’s telling that even in this race, when the base was looking frantically and desperately for a Not-Romney, not once did they consider Ron Paul for the position, despite his supposed “grassroots,” “outsider” appeal.
(Amusingly, PJMedia had an article the other day preaching reconciliation between the Ron Paul and “mainstream” GOP, and predicting “When they move together, better get out of their way!” It’s a pretty blatant piece of fluff designed to prevent the Paultards from Nadering them).
ETA: I know you said “within their own niches,” but Ron Paul’s niche seems even smaller than that of most “out of touch” oligarchs.
PIGL
The President has the power required to put an end to the covert coup-d’état financed by these two evil men, and no doubt many of their eviller cronies. These dangerous wreckers can simply be disappeared as the terrible dangers to national security that they just are. And who exactly will have the balls to complain about it? The ones who could do so have been the loudest in their support for the creation of the powers of a Caesar, and their bestowal on the President. It is time he started using them against the real enemies of the Republic and of mankind, not the destitute inhabitants of south west asia.
These people have to be stopped by any means necessary, and democratic means will never ever work against this money and power these people have been allowed to acquire and wield with utter impunity.
Svensker
@Cermet:
Dudette, actually. And not smart or I would have figured it out long ago. The Starr investigation started it for me because I thought there had to be SOMETHING and there wasn’t anything. “This is it?” was my thought. “Where’s all the felonious behavior?” which we had been assured was rife rife. That made me uneasy but didn’t wake me up. It was the run-up to the Iraq war that did it for me — it was so obviously a big lie, I was shocked that anyone fell for any of it. Complete and total crap. The scales fell from my eyes and like Saul, I was changed. It really was like waking up after a fever and realizing everything I thought I knew was a dream. Or like putting on the glasses in They Live.
Humbling, though. I was really really wrong for a long time. The one thing that hasn’t changed, at least, is I was always against war except as a true last resort (and even then I’m not so sure) and torture is, always has been, always will be, a deal breaker. So there’s that.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
Ron Paul is not a member of the tribe, and they know it. He’s an excuse for libertarians to vote Republican. The GOP has drifted closer to him because they’re embraced anti-government lunacy and he’s an anti-government lunatic, but he still isn’t coming from the same direction and doesn’t have the right talking points. They know he’s Other. They’ve always known it. He is never, ever going anywhere.
karen
Wasn’t the Koch family one of the founders of the John Birchers?
As for the “The Koch bros aren’t really Republican” theory I see it a different way.
They’re not Republican. They are libertarian.
It’s that the Republican party has become libertarian and the libertarian party has merged with the Republican party and has now become the Tea Party.
The Republican party has ceased to exist as anything but a name.
karen
@PIGL:
Like how? Enlighten me.
Roy G
@geg6: Ah, but the R’s do have a ground game – except they use ALEC and the anti choice movement and the pro gunners and voter suppression, and so on.
Villago Delenda Est
@karen:
Their father backed the JBS. Mainly because he became rabidly anti-communist after working for Stalin. Because Stalin, being a smarter capitalist than Koch, took his knowledge of drilling bit technology and didn’t provide him with a steady revenue stream from it, which Koch Senior was imagining he’d get out of the deal.
The Koch fortune is built on Koch Sr’s business relationship with Stalin, because Koch Sr. was frozen out of the US drilling bit field by jealous rivals here. He had no choice but to go to Stalin, and Stalin, as I said, was more clever and ruthless than Koch Sr.
PIGL
@karen: my understanding is that the President can order the arrest and indefinite detention-even execution-of any citizen and need provide no evidence or pretext, nor even acknowledge that such has taken place.
Given that is true, and given, as I believe, that the Kock brothers and their fellow conspiring billionaires are much more dangerous to the liberty and treasure of American citizens than all the “terrorists” ever hatched put together, my conclusion would follow.
How specifically would their persons be apprehended? I don’t know.
Villago Delenda Est
@PIGL:
Nuke their compounds from space.
Only way to be sure.
karen
@PIGL:
Do you really want to go down that road?
You should be careful about what you wish for.
Watch the movie “Z.” It was based on the true story of how the far right wing took control of Greece in the 60s by coup. Their logic was that the left wing was dangerous and needed to be taken out by any means necessary. Including assassinations.
Is that what you want? A coup that declares that someone is dangerous based not on violent actions they’ve done or espoused but on ideas and philosophies?
Think long and hard.
PIGL
@Villago Delenda Est: I am pretty sure a a platoon of special forces each would do the trick. Nuke free.
You know those super duper 24-7 security forces bad guys always have in the movies? They are very expensive, even for billionaires. A five person round the clock team of professionals would cost about 2 million a year, I reckon. Add in wives, kids, mistresses and second third or fourth homes, it adds up, even for billionaires. Unless they move to Mexico or Columbia or some place like that, they are helpless the moment a government choses to act against them. Unless, of course, they can buy it.
I am serious here. I believe that once a clique of people this wealthy and powerful are suffered to come into existence, they can not be restrained by political means. That leaves only two choices: 1) surrender; 2) ruthless extra-legal application of state power.
PIGL
@karen: @karen: I didn’t say I wanted it. It is that I don’t see an alternative except total surrender to the 0.01%.
You say they have not acted, but that is totally false. They have engaged in a 30+ year conspiracy to subvert the governments of the western world.
Also, I did not say “coup”. I said “application of state power”. I think what I advocate would even be “legal”, if that really means anything anymore..
Jc
@texascowgirl:
While I would like to be reassured, your question about ‘where are the liberal billionaires’ is still a good one. And still of major concern.
The only way romney was able to win the nomination, is by carpet bombing negative ads in various states.
Rove has amassed, what, 300 million? That is a lot of carpet bombing and the ads I’ve seen have been slick, and well done. (though of course incredibly disingenuous. Must be nice to have drive the economy into the ground, then spend four years trying to keep the economy down by oppose oppose oppose, anything that would help. Then turn around and blame Obama for not turning things around fast enough.)
And Romney is now even in the polls with Obama.
This lying, weaselly dissembler, who doesn’t have any principles, except to get elected, who changes positions, with the polls, who is a vulture capitalist, one of the type that wrecked the economy, – and of course a guy with the charisma of a slug – THIS GUY is tied with Obama??
Bin Laden is dead, and GM is alive. And yet this guy is tied with Obama.
It’s amazing.
So Romney and big money are going to be in a position again to carpet bomb ads. The only way Romney can win. When he should have no hope.
Yes, he has no ground game.
But where are the liberal rich to counteract the Robe money machine???
Frankensteinbeck
@Jc:
Romney is not even in the polls with Obama. He hasn’t been even in the polls with Obama. If anything, Obama’s been very gradually pulling ahead. Since polls wander all over the place, there’s always one contrary poll, and as soon as it happens, it’s trumpeted as Romney pulling even with Obama, over and over and over. Rasmussin also wildly distorts overall polling, to make it even easier to make that fib. Obama has consistently polled 4-9 points over Romney since the primaries heated up and anyone found out Romney exists.
J R
A couple of remarks. Does anyone think the GOP billionaires actually believe any of the tripe they’re selling to the unwashed lower middle class? Or are they knowingly funding tripe masquerading as political information in order to keep control of the government?
I prefer a crowd of thousands of people with torches, pitchforks, hot tar, feathers and a fence rail to late night rendition to Guantanamo even for the Koch brother, the Mellon bankers, etc. Seems more romantic to tar them and throw them astride their fence rails into the Mississip.
Kind of like the French revolution, but with Mark Twain as the American leader of style.
Second, there are people suggestible enough to believe any tripe sold by the proper authority figures – their bishop, a VFW buddy, whatever. I’m sure some of them can be sold by a TV ad, but most probably need a more hands-on approach, especially for something outside their sphere of comfort.
The Libtards and the Repugnants are all a bunch of selfish thoughtless anti-Americans… only anti-Americans hate the government currently installed via their precious Constitution. If they hate our government and /or constitutionally empowered leaders, they ipso facto hate America.
karen
@efgoldman:
GoBP? what does the B stand for?
newhavenguy
I guess they learned a few tricks from Poppa, who was unhinged even for a Bircher back in the day.
You can’t understand the American Right without understanding the importance of psychological projection to their… well, everything.
The JBS just knew that CPUSA was setting up front enterprises all over the place and doing all kinds of sneaky shit to advance Communism (FLUORIDE!)that the only reasonable response is to engage in a lot of creepy, conspiratorial and semi-criminal behavior, but bigger and better.
That’s why Roger Ailes sleeps well at night: he has known for years that the Liberal Media is just a propaganda shop with no regard for professional (or even human) ethics, and he is just doing it better so suck on that Libtards.
Reminds me of some Austrian guy who imagined a monstrous Jewish conspiracy so large he had to take unprecedented measures to build an even bigger and better criminal conspiracy.
Ha, just realized that if you strike “Jewish”, I could be talking about Hayek. LOLZ.)
These people are insane, and this will not end well. Good night, and good fuckin’ luck.
The Other Chuck
“Birchers” is too kind a term. People need to not be afraid to call them what they are. They are *fascists*.