Last updated on June 6th, 2014 at 12:51 am
In their push to buy Congress in 2014, the Koch brothers had a little explaining to do to their donors. After all, Mitt Romney isn’t in the White House. Cue the Karl Rove Fox News Ohio Goes for Obama face.
Lamenting in a memo obtained by Politico how the left has “outperformed our efforts in the field,” the Koch operation of Americans For Prosperity reminded donors that they are run “like a business” (in other words, they failed? This has implications worth investigating) and the left simply outdid them. The left had better messaging and lots of real people on the ground and they listened to what voters wanted.
HUH. It’s all so tricky.
Also shocking to the older, white folks at AFP, Americans actually want to help other Americans. (Apparently they hang out with only a certain kind of person – also worth investigating.) No one told them this, otherwise they would have totally changed their messaging to explain how giving the Kochs another tax break at the expense of feeding starving children is totally good for everyone.
No worries, rich people! The Koch brothers have a fix for all of these problems. They can fool people by using “regular folks” to pass on the message of the rich. And they’re going to hire people to act like Obama’s volunteers (apparently being a “community organizer” is something the Koch Brothers can only dream of).
Those hired people will “educate” “Hispanic communities about economic freedom principles and values such as free enterprise, limited government and personal responsibility.” They’re also going to educate young voters. Oh, boy. Maybe these same paid puppets of the old, white, rich Koch brothers will also “educate” African Americans about the Republican belief that slavery was great for black people.
Sure, the Kochs had a humiliating $400 million fail in 2012, but looky here, they’ve solved their messaging problem with a “sophisticated” strategy that targets specific demographics exactly like … Obama’s campaign — and remember, Republicans and the press were all telling us that Obama was going to lose, but Obama’s campaign explained to anyone willing to listen what they were doing and how it worked.
To remedy the messaging disadvantage, AFP developed “a sophisticated new media message-testing strategy to target specific demographics in specific locations we need to move on our issues,” according to the memo.
The resulting advertisements increasingly have used personal stories, often told by regular folks looking directly into the camera, to critique Democratic policies like Obamacare, and the politicians who support them. They’re part of a broader effort to project a kinder, gentler tone in espousing libertarian-infused government-slashing policies that sometimes risk coming across as coldhearted.
“If the presidential election told us anything, it’s that Americans place a great importance on taking care of those in need and avoiding harm to the weak,” reads the AFP memo.
Yeah. Americans care about the weak and vulnerable, those scumbags. Well, the Kochs can fix that. They will “correct” the voters’ “misconception” that the “free market” principles the Kochs are spending so much money trying to get enacted really will be super for the voters. But sadly for the Koch brothers, even lazy idiots (Romney made it clear how they see the people, but newsflash: Their contempt was evident prior to Romney being caught on tape articulating it for the world to judge) can figure out that if the Koch brothers are spending hundreds of millions to fool them into voting for something, it might not be super for them.
While the $125 million the Kochs are going to spend to buy Congress seems threatening, this memo also serves as a reminder of their biggest weakness.
They have no idea what the people whose votes they need want or care about. They don’t even know how to listen to anyone other than their own kind (see 2012 during which Obama’s campaign repeatedly explained about specific demographics in specific areas), so the chances of them sorting this in time for the 2014 election are slim. Yes, they are fooling a lot of people, and yes, campaign finance reform is necessary and Citizens United is a disgrace to democracy. Yes, they are doing a lot of damage. But also…
Americans are just not that into the Kochs or their “give us all of your money because freedom!” message.
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