With the Koch’s chosen candidate dropping out of the race earlier this week, the billionaire brothers are sure to be taking a new look at the Republican field and judging each of the remaining candidates by how willing they are to push the Kochs’ self-enriching agenda — could the Koch’s candidate be Jeb Bush?
But with Jeb! struggling, the brothers’ political network is being forced to scramble to save his campaign.
Earlier in the week Jeb took serious flak for “riding in the Trumpian slipstream” in arguing, “We should not have a multicultural society.” And in an effort to lend Jeb a helping hand, the head of the Kochs’ Latino outreach front group, LIBRE, defended that Jeb’s comments “were not a gaffe” in a TIME op-ed.
It’s not a surprise that LIBRE is first in line to defend Jeb — Jeb’s own staffer in charge of Hispanic outreach was formerly the LIBRE‘s National Strategic Director.
But in true Jeb! fashion, saying that America should not be multicultural isn’t the only offensive comments he made this week. In South Carolina yesterday, Jeb channeled Mitt Romney in explaining that the GOP should attract black voters with “a message of hope and aspiration,” not “free stuff.”
But the irony of Jeb blasting “free stuff” as the head of LIBRE, an organization who tries to woo the Latino community with free drivers ed classes, food giveaways, scholarships, and more, jumps to Jeb’s side isn’t lost on us.
Will the Koch network defend the free stuff they’re giving out to the Latino community in light of Jeb’s attack?
Or will Jeb denounce the free stuff that LIBRE gives out to build the Koch political machine’s database?
The only sure things are that Jeb will keep offending people while pandering to the Kochs in hopes of getting a piece of the $900 million the billionaire brothers have said they’ll spend on this election and LIBRE will continue pushing policies that are good for Charles and David but bad for the Latino community.