In Case You Hadn’t Noticed Yet, The Koch Brothers Are Losing The Republican Primary

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:12 pm

A Monmouth University poll released on September 3rd, confirms that Donald Trump is running away with the GOP race, and that retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is currently in second place. While it is easy to recognize that this mean Republican voters are falling in love with fringe candidates whose political views are bordering on comically absurd, it also reveals another emerging truth of the 2016 campaign. The billionaire Koch brothers are losing the Republican primaries, and losing badly.

Consider this. In the Monmouth survey, Self-funding billionaire Donald Trump polled 30 percent. Ben Carson, who is heavily reliant on small dollar donors, polled 18 percent. None of the Koch brothers’ favorite candidates could manage better than single digits.

In early August, the Koch brothers invited five candidates — Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina — to a special confab in a luxury California hotel. There the candidates were given the opportunity to make their case in front of the Kochs and other billionaires, and to grovel for their financial support.

Those five candidates are polling just 28 percent total, if you add them all together to create one Koch puppet “super candidate”. Trump alone beats Bush, Walker, Cruz, Rubio and Fiorina combined!

Worst of all for the Kochs, the winner of the post-confab wealthy donor straw poll, Scott Walker, is faring the poorest of the five Koch friendly candidates, mustering an anemic 3 percent national support in the latest Monmouth poll.

Democrats and Independents should take no delight in Donald Trump and Ben Carson running first and second in the polls, as both men would be poor leaders should they ever become president. However, at some level it is amusing that for all of their efforts to buy the loyalty of Republican political candidates, the Koch brothers are being shut out by wacky insurgents who aren’t exactly dancing to the beat of their financial drums.

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Keith Brekhus

Keith Brekhus is a progressive American who currently resides in Red Lodge, Montana. He is co-host for the Liberal Fix radio show. He holds a Master's Degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri. In 2002, he ran for Congress as a Green Party candidate in the state of Missouri. In 2014, he worked as a field organizer for Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick's successful re-election bid in Arizona's 1st Congressional District. He can be followed on Twitter @keithbrekhus or on Facebook.

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