Kochs brothers' plan for 2012: raise $88 million

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/49303.html

In an expansion of their political footprint, the billionaire Koch brothers plan to contribute and steer a total of $88 million to conservative causes during the 2012 election cycle, according to sources, funding a new voter micro-targeting initiative, grass-roots organizing efforts and television advertising campaigns.

In fact, as the annual Conservative Political Action Conference meets this week in Washington and conservatives assess the state of their movement, the Koch network of nonprofit groups, once centered on sleepy free-enterprise think tanks, seems to be emerging as a more ideological counterweight to the independent Republican political machine conceived by Bush-era GOP operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie before the 2010 midterm elections.

The aggressive embrace of political activism by the Koch brothers, Charles and David, has cheered fiscal conservatives, who hope they will reorient the conservative political apparatus around free-market, small government principles and candidates, and away from the electability-over-principles approach they see Rove and Gillespie as embodying.

But not everyone on the right is happy about the brothers’ increasing political profile. Some conservatives complain that the political operatives who work for the Kochs don’t play well with others in the movement and worry that their efforts to steer big money to favored groups undermines other, potentially valuable conservative efforts.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/49303.html#ixzz1DhcJpMPF

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Look in the couch cushions.

:shrug:

[Canuckistanian]

3. They spill that much during lunch

$88 mil is nothing. It's petty cash to them.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. Yet they still try to get it from others.

That's the depth of the psychosis.

[Canuckistanian]

2. "sleepy free-enterprise think tanks"?

Since when have they been "sleepy"?

They've been the driving force behind the neoconservative movement for decades. Bush, Rove and Giilespie took their whole ideology from "free-enterprise think tanks"

[Initech]

5. Couldn't we theoretically raise double that and kick those fuckers out?

[RKP5637]

6. I think they're trying to set themselves up as the Mubarak brothers in the US and

run the country.

[applegrove]

7. LOL. May the Koch brothers distort the carefully coiffed GOP image. LOL!

[brooklynite]

8. Why are they raising a penny?

I was told all the voting machines were rigged; so why spend the money on ads if you can just rig the votes?

[mythology]

9. 88, really?

A rather odd number. Why not 85 or 90?

Of course it's popular among white supremacists to identify themselves quietly to other white supremacists as the eighth letter of the alphabet is H and two of them equals heil hitler.

Most likely a coincidence, but a rather silly one to make. Although there are some other things associated with 88 like the speed for time travel in Back to the Future and 88 keys on a keyboard.

[Hannah Bell]

10. that is interesting. it is an odd fundraising target.

[Blue-Jay]

11. because it's a High Heavy amount.

it's also a Hard, Healthy amount to raise. they'd be Hailed as Heroes if they raised that much dough.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

12. Wasted money. It's gonna be Palin/Reagan 2012

[tekisui]

13. $88 million is a drop in the bucket for what will be spent in 2012.

The Presidential race alone will be over $500 million.