“The Koch operations are the most important nonparty political players in the U.S. today, and no one else is even close.”

That’s the harrowing POLITICO quote we woke up to this week. It sums up an article about the Kochs’ ongoing effort to stuff millions upon millions of dollars into a major data operation to cook up political profiles about the vast majority of the country’s citizens.

The effort, POLITICO says, gives the Kochs’ political outfit “all the earmarks of a national party.” It’s not the first time they’ve been described that way, but it’s probably the most telling evidence yet that the Kochs’ 30+ year effort to take over the GOP has come to fruition.

There’s more than a few problems here. The Kochs gobbled up their new data operation in the best way they know – they bought it. Then another one of their arms invested in it.

And then, after buying the company and looking to profit from it, the data got sold. To Republican candidates and the RNC.

You’ll remember, of course, that the Kochs’ political labyrinth is made up of supposedly independent groups. And those independent groups are actively working with the national Party and Republican candidates. Sounds, um, shady, right? Yeah. That’s why the American Democracy Legal Fund filed an FEC complaint about it.

So as the Kochs collect unchecked power and influence – and do so by whatever legally tenuous means they care to – they only get closer to their goal of holding all the Republican Party’s chips. And at the end of the day, it’s all to benefit their own bottom line.