Trump vs. Koch Is a Custody Battle Over Congress
By Jane Mayer, The New Yorker
03 August 18
Most of the media coverage of the ugly public feud, as the New York Times
called it, between President Trump and the Koch brothers has taken the Kochs
at their word that they may have to give up on the Republican Party of Trump
and start backing Democrats, so disgusted are they with the Presidents
protectionist trade policies. But history suggests that the Kochs threat is
about as believable as that of a parent threatening to just plain leave if
a balky toddler doesnt behave.
Despite the brothers record as among the countrys largest and most
consistently partisan financial sponsors, the Kochs pique at their own
party is nothing new. For decades they have complained bitterly about
Republican politicians whose fealty to their libertarian agenda has rarely,
in their view, been absolute enough. This dissatisfaction with the Grand Old
Party was evident as far back as 1980, when Charles Koch, who is now
eighty-two, convinced his younger brother David Koch, who is now
seventy-eight, to run for Vice-President on the Libertarian ticket, against
Ronald Reagan. The Kochs, who at one point were members of the fringe-right
John Birch Society, deemed Reagan insufficiently conservative, as they now
do Trump. But after Reagan won in a landslidethe Libertarian Party got only
one per cent of the popular votethe Kochs gave up on third-party politics.
From that point on, they used their vast family fortune to build a
three-pronged political machine comprised of lobbying, campaign donations,
and nonprofit pressure groups to pull the Republican Party toward their
views. One could argue that their return on investment has been remarkable;
the Republican Party has adopted many of their hard-right anti-government,
anti-regulation, and anti-tax views, few of which were in vogue when the
Kochs entered politics. But no matter how far right the G.O.P. has moved,
its never been quite far enough for Charles Koch, who declared, in 1978,
that our movement must destroy the prevalent statist paradigm.
Neither of the Bush Presidents passed the Kochs political-purity test. In
fact, it was the Kochs disappointment with George W. Bushs expansion of
prescription-drug benefits, among other issues, that inspired them, in 2003,
to form their political-fund-raising network with like-minded conservatives.
Since then, the group has grown into a private political machine that
arguably rivals, and by some estimates overpowers, the Republican Party
itself. Earlier this year, the network announced that it planned to spend
four hundred million dollars in the coming midterm-election cycle, to help
preserve the Republican majority in both houses of Congress. But last
weekend, somewhat unexpectedly, at a meeting in Colorado Springs, of some
five hundred members of this group, all of whom have pledged to contribute
at least a hundred thousand dollars annually to the cause, Koch officials
attacked Trump, in all but name, as divisive, and threatened to start
backing Democrats in some midterm races. This came atop the recent news that
the Kochs main political-advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, had
sponsored an ad praising Heidi Heitkamp, the Democratic senator, who is
running in a tough reëlection race in North Dakota, for voting to loosen
financial regulations. The Kochs havent committed to backing her, but they
have declined to support her Republican opponent, Kevin Cramer, more or less
thumbing their nose at the President, who personally endorsed him.
Trump took little time to fire back, tweeting, I dont need their money or
bad ideas, that he has beaten them at every turn, and that the Kochs
have become a total joke in real Republican circles. Trump, of course, was
never the Koch networks preferred candidate. In 2016, he was, in fact, the
only Republican Presidential candidate whom the Kochs declared they could
not support. As a would-be strongman, Trump shared none of their libertarian
anti-statist sympathies. In fact, Charles Koch memorably complained that
choosing between Trump and Hillary Clinton was like choosing between cancer
or a heart attack. Trump meanwhile derided the politicians who sought the
Kochs backing as puppets.
Yet Trump has done more to further the Kochs agenda than any previous
Administration. Despite claiming to represent the countrys forgotten men,
he has surrounded himself with Koch apparatchiks and allies. Several of his
Cabinet members allegiance to the Kochs long predates their allegiance to
Trump, including Vice-President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo,
and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The Administration has fulfilled
many of the Kochs wildest dreams, ranging from environmental revanchism to
extraordinarily regressive tax cuts. The Kochs have also lavished praise on
Trumps conservative judicial picks. As Trump himself observed in a tweet
this week, hes made Charles and David Koch, whose fortunes are estimated at
more than fifty-three billion dollars each, far wealthier. So, given how
richly Trump has rewarded them, why are the Kochs sounding off now?
On the surface, the cause of the rift is their opposition to Trumps
protectionist trade and immigration policies, which clash with their
free-market preferencesand Koch Industries bottom line. The policy fight
runs deep, reflecting a larger rift in the Republican Party on these issues.
Exacerbating tensions, Trump and Charles Koch are both headstrong
billionaires who are accustomed to buying, and then getting, their ways.
Both were sent to military schools by their parents, after having
disciplinary problems at home, and both have high regard for themselves as
self-made men, despite both inheriting vast fortunes from their fathers.
Beyond this, both appear to think that the Republican Party in particular,
and American politics in general, should be theirs to dominate. Yet, if you
parse last weekends complaint from Charles Koch carefully, what you see is
that his ire wasnt so much directed at Trump, whom he didnt name, as at
the Republicans in Congress for having fallen in line with the President
instead of with him. According to the Washington Post, Koch said that he
regrets backing some of the Republicans he helped elect, because they had
strayed from the Koch networks agenda. As a result, he reportedly said, at
the closed-door meeting in Colorado, Were going to be more strict on
holding someone accountable if they say theyre going to be for the
principles that we espouse, and then they arent. It was in this context
that he said he might even consider backing Democrats.
The conservative activist Erick Erickson told the Post that the Kochs are
rather appalled at what theyre seeing from Republicans who they helped
elect in 2010, 2014 and 2016and who promised to be fiscally responsible and
support free markets. Instead, many Republicans in Congress have now
defected to Trump, and the Kochs, like many others, are evidently
disappointed to see how easily their partys elected representatives have
switched their allegiance.
As Stephen Bannon, Trumps former chief political strategist and an
architect of the nationalist and nativist policies that the Kochs oppose,
put it, the donor class controlled the Republican Partythat is, until the
rise of Trump. Now, the Kochs real problem, he said, was that they see
that being ripped away.
Charles Kochs real beef may not be so much with the President, from whom he
never expected all that much, and, who, like other Republican Presidents,
has disappointed him. Instead, it is the Republicans in Congress whose
campaigns he lavishly funded. Unforgivably, they have violated the age-old
definition of an honest politician, one who, once bought, stays bought.
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