Yesterday’s bombshell POLITICO report revealed:
The Koch brothers gave their “blessing” to a political consulting firm, Aegis Strategic, to create a new, secretive nonprofit that spent hundreds of thousands in dark money on strategically timed attack ads to take out a rival of one of the Kochs’ chosen candidates in a Republican primary.
At the same time, Freedom Partners ran ads against the general election opponent of the Kochs’ chosen candidate.
After the Kochs’ chosen candidate won the GOP primary, the same political consulting firm helped raise hard money for the Kochs’ candidate at a Koch donor confab where the candidate also personally thanked Koch network donors.
What it means for 2016:
- The Kochs are willing to play ball in GOP primary races and spend serious money attacking Republican rivals of their chosen candidates through dark money non groups.
- With the Kochs’ success of parachuting in with new, secret groups in 2014, why wouldn’t they run the same playbook in 2016 to ensure their hand picked candidate wins?
- While earlier this week Charles Koch said he won’t formally endorse in the 2016 GOP primary (because every candidate is good for them) the Kochs now have a precedent of secretly playing in GOP primaries through dark money groups.
- One GOP candidate already has a dark money nonprofit spending serious cash on TV. (HINT: rhymes with Barko Ruffio)
- The Koch “muscular political machine” is bigger than anyone ever knew — and undoubtedly surpassing the Republican Party apparatus. This new report reinforces Charles and David Koch’s status as “political kingmakers” — they even see themselves as “transforming American politics.”
- Power, money, influence, and functions of the Republican Party are defecting from the GOP’s traditional infrastructure to the Koch brothers. GOP candidates aren’t built by, backed, and beholden to the GOP anymore but to Charles and David Koch.