If Nate Silver is to be believed, the Democrats are in for a tough time this election season. Silver gives the edge to a Republican takeover in the Senate. Dragging the Dems down are a number of things: failure of ObamaCare to deliver anything but higher costs and fewer options, politization of the IRS, Obama's pathetic responses to Bashar Assad's war on his citizens and the Russian incursion into Crimea to name a few.
Unable to defend their policy choices, Democrats turn to a familiar game plan. Demonize the Koch brothers.
The Nevada Democrat, in the first of two floor speeches on the subject Wednesday, questioned the veracity of new advertisements from Koch-backed groups that feature individuals sharing stories about the apparent hardships they've faced because of the Affordable Care Act.
One features a Michigan resident who said she was fighting leukemia and had her insurance canceled because of the new law. The woman says Rep. Gary Peters' vote to pass the law "jeopardized my health." Peters is the Democratic candidate for Michigan's open Senate seat.
Reid called that ads "absolutely false," and said it was part of an effort by the Koch brothers to "buy" the election.
But he returned to the floor hours later with a hint of a retraction, saying he was not in position to say that all ads from the group were lies — only "the vast, vast majority of them."
But he went further in attacking the ads' fiscal backers.
"It's time that the American people spoke out against this terrible dishonesty of these two brothers, who are about as un-American as anyone that I can imagine," Reid said.
The Koch brothers are Un-American liars, said Harry Reid from the Senate Floor. There's a reason he stood at the Senate podium to deliver his diatribe. He's immune from any charges of libel when speaking in the Senate. The news media are shielded from libel, too. Rarely do public figures win libel suits. So following along from Harry's lead, lefty news media outlets are jumping on the anti-Koch-brother bandwagon. Here is The Nation hyperventilating in its headline:
What’s Really Behind the Koch Attacks on Democrats
Hint: it’s not about healthcare.
Do you want to guess what it's all about? Here's a hint: Oil. Well, OK that was more than a hint.
The Kochs’ investments in fossil fuel include petrochemical complexes and thousands of miles of pipeline and refineries in Alaska, Minnesota, and Texas, an empire that emits over 24 million tons of carbon pollution every year, about as much as 5 million cars. Thanks to a recent investigation by the International Forum on Globalization, we now have confirmation of what was long suspected: the Kochs are one of the biggest investors in Alberta’s tar sands, with a Koch subsidiary holding leases on 1.1 million acres of land in the region, giving them a major stake in the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline—despite their insistence otherwise. [My emphasis]
Every couple of years the left breathlessly reveals the same nefarious plot. It's the one where dull witted, unsuspecting Americans are lured into gas stations to fill up. Fools. And who's to blame? Why, the Koch brothers, of course.
There is, however, some dispute over the Koch brothers' interests as relate to the Keystone Pipeline. According to PowerLine Blog, the Koch brothers have none, as John Hinderaker explained to the Washington Post, who also jumped on Harry Reid's bandwagon.
On Thursday, the Washington Post published an article by Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin titled “The biggest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers.” The article’s first paragraph included this claim:
The biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the privately-owned cornerstone of the fortune of conservative Koch brothers Charles and David.
The theme of the article was that the Keystone Pipeline is all about the Koch brothers; or, at least, that this is a plausible claim. The Post authors relied on a report by a far-left group called International Forum on Globalization that I debunked last October.
So Thursday evening, I wrote about the Post article here. I pointed out that Koch is not, in fact, the largest leaser of tar sands land; that Koch will not be a user of the pipeline if it is built; and that construction of the Keystone Pipeline would actually be harmful to Koch’s economic interests, which is why Koch has never taken a position on the pipeline’s construction. The Keystone Pipeline, in short, has nothing whatsoever to do with the Koch brothers. [All emphasis in the original]
Which is not to say that the Koch brothers don't support approval of the Keystone Pipeline. To be honest, I don't know if they do or they don't, but I would be willing to bet that they do — not because they would profit from it, since apparently they would not, at least in the immediate term, but because it would strengthen America. It would create American jobs. It would boost the economy.
But elements of the media have gotten the memo, so to speak. There is so little that Democrats can campaign on in the current election season. Their stewardship has been dismal at best, if we're talking about the economy. Foreign policy? A disaster.
That leaves only one thing. Find a target and demonize it: The Koch brothers. Isn't it heart warming to know the media is there to help.
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