This year is a breakthrough year for anarchic conservatism, for Charles and David Koch have turned Maoist.
Gone is the laissez-faire, Nietzschean conviction that out of chaos comes order; in are the experimental, Marxist concepts of central planning and tight control from atop.
"This year," reports Politico, the spidery Kochs "are rolling out a new, more integrated approach to politics." In progress is a Kochian defection to central control, for only a crisp concentration of planning can rein in the kind of "headache-inducing freelancing by affiliated operatives" that plagued them in 2012.
In brief, the glories of competition and piecemeal autonomy severely hindered the billionaire brothers' earlier revolutionary efforts; thus it occurs that the competitive instinct and independence down and throughout the organizational chart are, in the contemporary idiom, for the wacko birds.
The Kochs will take the dictatorship of the plutocracy, thank you very much.
And their Long March begins today, from the posh Palm Springs, California. Provisioned only with knapsacks of Grand Passion Caviar and vats of Chateau Mouton Rothschild, whither the Koch brothers?
The experiment in free market politics failed for all to see. Which brings me, in a roundabout way to Christie. I have always agreed that Christie had no chance to become the Republican presidential nominee. And obviously he has no chance now. But lately I have revised my opinion on what his chances were.
What strategy, I ask myself, might a blue state contender like Christie adopt in the current political environment. And that environment was the post 2012 state where the money (remember the money? ) which always seeks power and has little use for ideology discovered that backing losers doesn't get you power. Well I did think at the time that the money had two options, back more moderate Republicans or more conservative Democrats. So Christie needed to do one obvious thing. He needed to convince the money that he could deliver on something neither McCain nor Romney could do. He needed to persuade them that he was the Great White Contender who could decisively dominate in a blue state and by extension other blue states. Only in this way could he accumulate the piles of cash needed to execute the Romney Strategy of pounding primary opponents into the dust with a money hammer.
It might have worked too had his need to run up the score in New Jersey (while making it clear that money could buy you influence in getting your projects advanced. ) not lead to such incredible hubris. I understand they needed to make it known that political support brought influence but by e-mail?
Posted by: Peter G | January 26, 2014 at 10:02 AM