Frank Rich, taking off from Jane Mayer's New Yorker article about the Koch brothers and their backing for far right wing causes, adds some reminders.
For example, the assault of the righteous on George Soros as a Koch look-alike: the Tea Party had to give up on that one. There really is a difference between the Kochs and Soros.
Some of Mayer’s blogging detractors unwittingly upheld the premise of her article (titled “Covert Operations”) by conceding that they have been Koch grantees. None of them found any factual errors in her 10,000 words. Many of them tried to change the subject to George Soros, the billionaire backer of liberal causes. But Soros is a publicity hound who is transparent about where he shovels his money. And like many liberals — selflessly or foolishly, depending on your point of view — he supports causes that are unrelated to his business interests and that, if anything, raise his taxes.
The Kochs have been shoveling some of their millions into their cultural causes as a way of laundering their reputations and acquiring social clout among the powerful. But their effort reveals their cynicism.
Koch-supported lobbyists, foundations and political operatives are at the center of climate-science denial — a cause that forestalls threats to Koch Industries’ vast fossil fuel business. While Koch foundations donate to cancer hospitals like Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, Koch Industries has been lobbying to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from classifying another product important to its bottom line, formaldehyde, as a “known carcinogen” in humans (which it is).
It's not just the New York social group they're courting. They're working on the "heartland" as they gather the Tea Party around them. Rich imagines the Kochs "must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that working Americans are aiding and abetting their selfish interests."
The real dopes in all this are the know-nothing members of the Tea Party themselves -- our neighbors -- who allow themselves to be used as destructive weapons. We've all heard stories about finding out about a neighbor who may not have been the brightest bulb on the block but who was a decent person for years on end who now turns out to have beeen 1) another dupe of an extremist group like Al Qaeda or Aryan Nation, 2) a ranting and resentful tool of an empty dumb-ass politician like Sarah Palin, or 3) the proud, placard-bearing tool of far right wing megabucks who detest and patronize them.
Elements of all of those extreme groups exist within the Tea Party. The Aryan Nation's fear and hatred of darker skins is part of the mix. The Koch are there with their money and their intention to turn America into a confirmed oligarchy. Perhaps most surprising, a Saudi group with ties to terrorists are investors in Murdoch's media operations that have in turn, been active members of the team that took over the Tea Party even as it was forming.
When wolves of Murdoch’s ingenuity and the Kochs’ stealth have been at the door of our democracy in the past, Democrats have fought back fiercely. Franklin Roosevelt’s triumphant 1936 re-election campaign pummeled the Liberty League as a Republican ally eager to “squeeze the worker dry in his old age and cast him like an orange rind into the refuse pail.” When John Kennedy’s patriotism was assailed by Birchers calling for impeachment, he gave a major speech denouncing their “crusades of suspicion.”
Obama hasn't responded.
Ironically, members of the Tea Party and Obama are alike in their unwillingness to face the issue of who's behind all this. While Obama appears to have made the decision to ignore the problem, the Tea Party itself , faced with a choice between honest grassroots political action and publicity has chosen the latter. They like the money and, most of all, they like the limelight. With stunning and dangerous naivete, they're supporting the Wall Street/Washington oligarchy while continuing to behave as though they're part of what NPR calls a "church picnic." Maybe Obama's presidency will turn out to have been a four-year church picnic, a naive little pause between the economically and socially destructive Bush presidency and the new oligarchy.
That leaves the rest of us moving on and doing our own fighting.
