Counting on the 2014 election to be about basic economic fairness, one Democratic-aligned group is going to be focusing entirely on that message, using the
Koch brothers as their target. American Bridge, headed up by David Brock, says that his organization is creating a research and rapid-response war room to answer attacks on Democrats from the Kochs and the candidates they're backing.
”Senator Reid and the Senate leadership have raised this as an issue,” Brock said in an interview with “Open Mike”. “This is the party of Koch, and we want Americans to understand what that means in their daily lives. It will basically have two aspects to it. One is expose and rebut … their self-serving policy agenda, not only nationally, but in the states.”
Brock added, “Secondly, we’re going to do some really deep-dive research into Koch industries and related entities and their businesses practices. And at the end of the day what we’re going to show is that the Kochs are leaders of a freakish ideological cult that is designed to rig the system to their benefit and to rob Americans of Social Security and decent wages. … I think that the Kochs don’t view their investments politically as investments in the country but in their companies.”
That project has launched a website,
Real Koch Facts, and is running ads which will introduce the Kochs and their agenda: "supporting tax cuts for the wealthy, weakening Medicare, and eliminating the minimum wage at the expense of working families."
This focus on the Kochs has much larger themes that Democrats think they can win on—economic fairness, the corrupting influence of money in politics, an economic status quo that benefits the wealthy. They've got reason to believe they'll win on it, because they've got polling that tells them so. Besides, the Kochs are the best cartoon villains the Republicans have coughed up since Dick Cheney.