Koch Addiction on the Left

[Robert Campbell]

Pretty good piece by Matthew Continetti, on the Left's belated discovery of Charles and David Koch:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/paranoid-style-liberal-politics_555525.html

The Weekly Standard is one of those opinion periodicals that does much better when in opposition.

Particularly when in opposition to Obama.

Under Dubya, even under Clinton, TWS was fairly dismal.

Robert Campbell

[Dennis Hardin]

Excellent article, Robert. I was not aware of how important these two guys were to the history of libertarianism. Without Charles, apparently there would be no Cato Institute. And the two of them together are playing an important role in the success of the TEA Party. Those two facts alone underscore their importance and explain why the left would be so eager to demonize them.

Thanks for posting the link.

[Robert Campbell]

Dennis,

Continetti did his research.

There's a lot more about the Koch brothers in Brian Doherty's book Radicals for Capitalism. Their influence over the Libertarian Party was highly controversial; ultimately their people were pushed out. The expression "Kochtopus" actually originated during that conflict.

But, hey, they only had to labor in obscurity for 35 years before the Left-wing media decided to talk about them.

Robert Campbell

[Selene]

Dennis,

Continetti did his research.

There's a lot more about the Koch brothers in Brian Doherty's book Radicals for Capitalism. Their influence over the Libertarian Party was highly controversial; ultimately their people were pushed out. The expression "Kochtopus" actually originated during that conflict.

But, hey, they only had to labor in obscurity for 35 years before the Left-wing media decided to talk about them.

Robert Campbell

Robert:

Approximately when were their people pushed out?

Adam

[jriggenbach]

Dennis,

Continetti did his research.

There's a lot more about the Koch brothers in Brian Doherty's book Radicals for Capitalism. Their influence over the Libertarian Party was highly controversial; ultimately their people were pushed out. The expression "Kochtopus" actually originated during that conflict.

But, hey, they only had to labor in obscurity for 35 years before the Left-wing media decided to talk about them.

Robert Campbell

Robert:

Approximately when were their people pushed out?

Adam

1984.

JR

[Selene]

Dennis,

Continetti did his research.

There's a lot more about the Koch brothers in Brian Doherty's book Radicals for Capitalism. Their influence over the Libertarian Party was highly controversial; ultimately their people were pushed out. The expression "Kochtopus" actually originated during that conflict.

But, hey, they only had to labor in obscurity for 35 years before the Left-wing media decided to talk about them.

Robert Campbell

Robert:

Approximately when were their people pushed out?

Adam

1984.

JR

Thank you JR:

Now I recall that in 1980 we reached the national high water mark with Clark and Koch on the ticket. Got close to 1,000,000 votes and over 1%.

Then in '83-'84 they were forced out and it has been downhill since then with the party.

I remember how pissed off I was because we had gotten a permanent ballot line for the party in NY and we got a local guy elected to town council in NJ and I thought we really had a chance to build.

Damn.

Again thanks for the memory jog.

Adam

Edited March 29, 2011 by Selene

[jriggenbach]

Dennis,

Continetti did his research.

There's a lot more about the Koch brothers in Brian Doherty's book Radicals for Capitalism. Their influence over the Libertarian Party was highly controversial; ultimately their people were pushed out. The expression "Kochtopus" actually originated during that conflict.

But, hey, they only had to labor in obscurity for 35 years before the Left-wing media decided to talk about them.

Robert Campbell

Robert:

Approximately when were their people pushed out?

Adam

1984.

JR

Thank you JR:

Now I recall that in 1980 we reached the national high water mark with Clark and Koch on the ticket. Got close to 1,000,000 votes and over 1%.

Then in '83-'84 they were forced out and it has been downhill since then with the party.

I remember how pissed off I was because we had gotten a permanent ballot line for the party in NY and we got a local guy elected to town council in NJ and I thought we really had a chance to build.

Damn.

Again thanks for the memory jog.

Adam

I'm a little uncomfortable myself with phrases like "forced out" in connection with the departure of the Kochtopus people from the LP in 1984. To me it would be more accurate to say that they (the Kochtopus people) walked out. When they lost the campaign to install their candidate (Earl Ravenal) as the LP presidential nominee in '84, they said, "The hell with it," and decided not to stay and try to take back control of the party, but rather to walk away and put their money and their talents elsewhere. Specifically, they decided to stop focusing on political candidates and campaigns and to focus instead on policy and on researching and promoting libertarian policy recommendations to the candidates who actually get elected - the Republicans and Democrats. It was around 1984 that the Cato Institute finished the process of sloughing off its non-policy-related projects to the Institute for Humane Studies and the Libertarian Review Foundation and began focussing almost exclusively on trying to influence policy. It was during this same period in the early-to-mid '80s that the Mises Institute was founded and began concentrating on exactly the sorts of scholarly and educational work that Cato had largely given up.

(None of this should be taken, by the way, as criticism of Cato or any libertarian organization. Cato did excellent work before it changed its focus to policy and it has done excellent work since. It is a great asset to the libertarian movement. But it did change its focus back in 1982 -1984, and that change was not unrelated to the withdrawal of the Kochtopus forces from the LP.)

I don't think I'd say it's been downhill for the party since 1984. Not exactly. It quickly went downhill after the Kochtopus walkout, but I'd say it bottomed out in the early '90s with the Andre Marrou campaign. Then, for nearly a decade, with Harry Browne, there was reason for hope. Since then, it's been pretty dismal. Maybe I'm quibbling.

JR

[Selene]

Dennis,

Continetti did his research.

There's a lot more about the Koch brothers in Brian Doherty's book Radicals for Capitalism. Their influence over the Libertarian Party was highly controversial; ultimately their people were pushed out. The expression "Kochtopus" actually originated during that conflict.

But, hey, they only had to labor in obscurity for 35 years before the Left-wing media decided to talk about them.

Robert Campbell

Robert:

Approximately when were their people pushed out?

Adam

1984.

JR

Thank you JR:

Now I recall that in 1980 we reached the national high water mark with Clark and Koch on the ticket. Got close to 1,000,000 votes and over 1%.

Then in '83-'84 they were forced out and it has been downhill since then with the party.

I remember how pissed off I was because we had gotten a permanent ballot line for the party in NY and we got a local guy elected to town council in NJ and I thought we really had a chance to build.

Damn.

Again thanks for the memory jog.

Adam

I'm a little uncomfortable myself with phrases like "forced out" in connection with the departure of the Kochtopus people from the LP in 1984. To me it would be more accurate to say that they (the Kochtopus people) walked out. When they lost the campaign to install their candidate (Earl Ravenal) as the LP presidential nominee in '84, they said, "The hell with it," and decided not to stay and try to take back control of the party, but rather to walk away and put their money and their talents elsewhere. Specifically, they decided to stop focusing on political candidates and campaigns and to focus instead on policy and on researching and promoting libertarian policy recommendations to the candidates who actually get elected - the Republicans and Democrats. It was around 1984 that the Cato Institute finished the process of sloughing off its non-policy-related projects to the Institute for Humane Studies and the Libertarian Review Foundation and began focussing almost exclusively on trying to influence policy. It was during this same period in the early-to-mid '80s that the Mises Institute was founded and began concentrating on exactly the sorts of scholarly and educational work that Cato had largely given up.

(None of this should be taken, by the way, as criticism of Cato or any libertarian organization. Cato did excellent work before it changed its focus to policy and it has done excellent work since. It is a great asset to the libertarian movement. But it did change its focus back in 1982 -1984, and that change was not unrelated to the withdrawal of the Kochtopus forces from the LP.)

I don't think I'd say it's been downhill for the party since 1984. Not exactly. It quickly went downhill after the Kochtopus walkout, but I'd say it bottomed out in the early '90s with the Andre Marrou campaign. Then, for nearly a decade, with Harry Browne, there was reason for hope. Since then, it's been pretty dismal. Maybe I'm quibbling.

JR

Jeff:

Not at all. In fact, my hopes were renewed with Harry Browne and I worked as hard as I could for him, but my wife and I were having the third (3rd) child ever born in the history of Sloan Kettering, so you can understand that I had just a few more pressing distractions at the time.

However, I tried to get re-involved when we had a beautiful house out in Setauket Long Island in the early nineties when they nominated Howard Stern to be the gubernatorial candidate in NY State.

I was mortified because he was for the death penalty! I rejoined the party in Suffolk County and became the campaign director, but quickly discovered that very few of the membership wanted to do the hard election district by election district work to build the party.

We had some really fine folks in Suffolk, but the party was not dedicated to electing candidates which, as I would explain at the meetings was kinda the reason for being a political party. Otherwise, we should be a think tank or a debating society.

So I agree with your general analysis. Additionally, Cato does yeoman work and is an extremely valuable resource.

Adam