The Republican Gotterdammerung

There have been a number of stories in the last few days about the "war" between the Republican National Committee and the Koch brothers.  As usual, none of them seem to understand what is really happening.

In reading the details below, please remember Lenin's line about capitalists selling their enemies the rope needed to hang them.  Of course, Lenin thought the enemies would come from the left, not the right; he never understood that people who pay for free health care, free education, and fair pay for all, can't afford a war against the guys who put their money into all the guns.  But someone can. Details below.

From an article a couple of days ago in the Washington Post:

"For years, Republicans have been fighting to empower people like the Kochs and increase their political power, and now the Kochs may end up swallowing the Republican Party itself.

This current dispute is about whether Republican candidates for office will use the RNC’s voter file to target their campaign activities, or whether they’ll use a system created by the Kochs’ political operation. According to Ward, the RNC sees the Koch’s system as a real threat, and things are getting ugly:

Since then, relations between the two sides have soured, turning into what one Republican operative described as “all-out war.” Interviews with more than three dozen people, including top decision-makers in both camps, have revealed that the Kochs’ i360 platform for managing voter contacts — which is viewed by many as a superior, easier-to-use interface than what’s on offer from the RNC — is becoming increasingly popular among Republican campaigns.

There’s a pretty rich irony in hearing an RNC spokesperson complain about the influence of unaccountable rich people on politics. That’s because the power the Kochs (and other mega-donors) are building is a direct consequence of everything Republicans have advocated for years. They’re the ones who filed lawsuits to try to weaken campaign finance laws. They’re the ones who celebrated when those lawsuits succeeded. They’re the ones who rush to exploit every new loophole so the most amount of money can be spent with the least amount of accountability. They’re the ones who say that money equals speech, and liberty demands that the wealthy be able to spend all they want on campaigns.

But it’s possible that party leaders may not have predicted just how serious and involved the Kochs would become in their political activities."

Let's not forget that the Republicans deliberately made this possible, it never occurring to them that, once the really rich people were in charge, they would have no need for the rest of them.  As Joan McCarter at Daily Kos puts it:

"Of course the Kochs are trying to take over the party, and the party has been more than happy to take the millions and millions of dollars from the Kochs that comes with that."

But even she doesn't get what is really happening here.  You see, the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson, Foster Friess, the Waltons, and the couple dozen other sociopathic right wing billionaires that are willing to make the investment,  don't need the Republican party any more.  The only thing of value the Republicans have left is their database sucker list, and everyone knows you can buy those.  These super rich guys paid the Republicans to make it legal for them to buy the government, and now the party has no more purpose.  They are not even required to con the rubes with their fear mongering and racism and stoking of greed; the Kochs and their ilk no longer need even the fiction of representing the masses.  Billion dollar negative campaigns and already rigged electoral systems can accomplish every thing they want.

No, as I have been saying for some time, what is panicking the Republican leadership is not that there is a war between them and their biggest donors, but that the war is already over, and the Republicans have lost.  We have reached the point where a handful of families now have the ability to force whatever kind of government they want on the country, with only the minor impediment of the spineless Democrats, with their decades long history of facing a long campaign to cheat them out of any role in government, by just averting their heads and counting on the Republican clown car to at least keep them in the White House, as Republican deals with the devil have taken away most State governments, Congress and even the Federal courts.

It's still a two-seat game of musical chairs in this country; the Republican party, however, has pretty much lost its seat to the Billionaires.  Just being rich is not enough any more.  Just as the Republicans no longer need the middle class in order to hang on to power, the Kochs and their ilk no longer need the merely rich.  People like the Romneys and the Bushes are suddenly finding themselves outside the circle of power, just like poor people and minorities and all the others that have to actually work for a living.  That's why they are panicking- they have created a country in which they aren't going to get anywhere close to the levers of power any more, and they realize that this dooms them to decline into the same condition they have created for all the rest of us.