Democracy to the highest bidder! (...?)
The rise of the super PAC in the 2012 presidential election seemed like the pinnacle of Big Money politics—an unprecedented expansion of fundraising and donor influence.
But that was then. For 2016, the pioneers of that kind of politics—conservative billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch—have found a new summit. According to the New York Times, the siblings plan to spend close to $900 million on next year’s campaign, with incursions into the Republican presidential primary. At more than double the roughly $400 million the Koch brothers spent in 2012, this money would go to polling, analytics, advertising, grassroots campaigns, single-issue advocacy groups, and more.
For comparison’s sake, in the last presidential election, the Republican National Committee—along with the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee—spent a total of $657 million. It’s Democratic counterparts, likewise, spent a total of $647 million. The committees spent somewhat smaller amounts in the 2008 election and are likely to spend similarly larger amounts next year.
Nevertheless, an interesting line of thinking at the end:
For liberal observers, there’s a certain irony to these moves and machinations. In Democratic politics, the Koch brothers are real-life bogeymen, avatars of rapacious greed and a dangerous threat to our public institutions. But in Republican politics, the Koch brothers may become a new tool foraccountability: a way for less powerful parts of the party to ignore the usual gatekeepers and exert their will.