Koch Brothers Seek to Rein in the GOP Presidential Clown Car

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You know that things are truly out of control when even the vile Koch brothers feel the need to rein in the insanity gripping the GOP 2016 presidential candidate clown car.  Especially when the Koch brothers have financed some of the groups that have given rise to the clinically insane candidates and/or given them some level of legitimacy withing certain utterly stupid elements of the Christofascists/Tea Party.  An article in the Washington Post looks at the Koch brothers' concern over the lunacy that them selves helped to unleash.  Here are article highlights:

By my count, there are currently 10 candidates who are declared or all but certain to run, and another four who will probably run. But while the voters might find this an embarrassment of riches, for the party’s leaders and financiers, it looks like a recipe for trouble. Which is how I interpret this news:

In a Saturday interview on the Larry Kudlow Show,  a nationally syndicated radio broadcast, David Koch let it slip that the roughly $900 million that he and his brother, Charles, plan to lavish on the 2016 presidential race could find its way into the hands of more than one GOP contender.

“We are thinking of supporting several Republicans,” David Koch said, adding, “If we’re happy with the policies that these individuals are supporting, we’ll finance their campaigns.”

By saying they’re going to support several candidates in the primaries, the Kochs are pledging to accelerate the winnowing process, by which the race’s chaff can be sloughed off and the focus can stay on the serious contenders.

Don’t be fooled by the line about them supporting all the ones whose policies they’re happy with. That’s because there’s almost no disagreement among the candidates, at least on the issues the Kochs care about. All of them would like to see low taxes on the wealthy (most have even advocated a flat tax, a boon to people like the Kochs), a dramatic reduction in regulations that affect corporations and a rollback of the social safety net. Where the Kochs personally disagree with the candidates (as they may on some social issues or on immigration), they disagree with all the candidates, because the candidates’ positions are so similar.

If the Kochs pick out a few candidates to support, it will be the ones they think would be the strongest in a general election and those they think put the best face on the GOP.

And the Kochs aren’t the only ones trying to do this winnowing. Fox News, which always keeps the long-term interests of the Republican Party in mind, recently announced that in the first debate of the season, it will be refusing admittance to all but 10 candidates. 

But their power is limited. One result of the newly freewheeling nature of presidential elections is that a rich donor or two can prop up the candidacy of someone with little chance to win the party’s nomination, enabling him or her to stick around and cause trouble months after he or she ought to have departed the race. This year, multiple candidates could have billionaires feeding them the money they need to keep their campaigns active deep into the primary season. If you’re a thoughtful Republican, a primary with this many candidates is a cacophonous mess, full of extremist cranks squabbling with each other and taking progressively nastier potshots at the leaders, one of whom will end up as the nominee. The longer it goes, the more that nominee has to pander to the base and the less time he or she will have to focus on Hillary Clinton.

If the Kochs are ready to put some of their ample resources into the primary campaign, it’s a sign that the enormous size of the primary field is generating some serious concern at the top of the GOP. The question is whether, even with their money, there’s much they can do about it.

The so-called GOP establishment helped enable the Christofascists, white supremacists and anti-extremists to gain a foot hold in the GOP and now they are looking for ways to kill the Frankenstein monsters they created.  I hop the monsters turn on them and take the party down.  It would almost be divine justice.