Of Kochs, Pigs, and Republicans

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Charles even convinced David to stand as the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in 1980 – a clever maneuver that allowed David to lavish unlimited money on his own ticket. The Koch-funded 1980 platform was nakedly in the brothers' self-interest – slashing federal regulatory agencies, offering a 50 percent tax break to top earners, ending the "cruel and unfair" estate tax and abolishing a $16 billion "windfall profits" tax on the oil industry. The words of Libertarian presidential candidate Ed Clark's convention speech in Los Angeles ring across the decades: "We're sick of taxes," he declared. "We're ready to have a very big tea party." In a very real sense, the modern Republican Party was on the ballot that year – and it was running against Ronald Reagan.

-- Tim Dickinson, "Inside the Koch Brothers' Toxic Empire" at Rolling Stone

Comments

[madscience.livejournal.com]

And Reagan's party had to adopt some planks from the Koch brothers' platform in order to retain voters. This is how third parties win elections... a lesson that the left has yet to learn.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Really? I could not have imagined that the Libertarians could have been that significant. I would have thought that just about the only example of a Third Party having real influence in a presidential election would be Ross Perot in '96.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Did you mean 1992? Steve Kornacki wrote a piece for Salon debunking the notion that Perot helped throw the election to Clinton. (http://www.salon.com/2011/04/04/third_party_myth_easterbrook/)

I used to assume George Wallace threw the election for Nixon in 1968, but that's assuming those former Democratic voters would have supported Humphrey. I doubt that now. They would have likely voted for Nixon.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're right: 1992. Clinton didn't need any help with Dole, heh.

[pacotelic.livejournal.com]

All you need for a candidate to throw an election is for them to split the vote.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

Isn't that exactly what the quote is about? Do you have any other explanation for how or why the GOP evolved so rapidly to resemble their right-wing opponents?

Here's a list of elections influenced by third parties: http://www.infoplease.com/timelines/3rdparties.html

And here's a list of important issues first raised by third parties, which were later adopted by major parties to avoid splitting the vote: http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/politicalsystem/a/thirdparties.htm This is the forgotten history that the Koch brothers took their cue from.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

The quote is from a story on the Kochs rather than the evolution of the Republican Party. It didn't even talk about the GOP adopting some of their planks. The point, I think, was that the Kochs were among the first on the Tea Party far-right of today. Though, implicitly, with your information, I can see that the Kochs were even more influential early on than I understood.

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Having a system where two and only two parties are actually viable is undemocratic.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

Agreed. IMO, the only thing we should be trying to do within the system, is break the system.

[mudryikot.livejournal.com]

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

There's a nice bit in one of the books I read recently noting that extremist views tend to rise to more mainstream when the extremists control the energy flows. In this way, the Wa'habists in Saudi Arabia are very much like the Kochs, those that use their wealth to promote a worldview that—until the oil started to flow—previously looked to be batshit insane.