The Koch brothers’ dark money screwed Republicans again.
In California, an FPPC investigation into conservative groups funneling money into the 2012 state election turned a previously private GOP strategist’s memo public. The memo Republican consultant and fundraiser Jeff Miller wrote to his clients was meant to be private, but as part of the documents included in the investigation into the Koch brothers dark money, it is now public.
The state ended up levying $16 million in fines against conservative groups, which they probably won’t end up paying but a legislative point has been made.
Miller’s memo is a death knell for California Republicans, noting that the only way they are going to be able to hang on is to “to try and force the Democrats into making mistakes”. Miller has a strong reputation within the business community, so his words should carry some weight.
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Cathleen Decker at the LA Times reported:
“Over the last two decades, California’s working class has slowly migrated out of the state and Latino and women voters are completely disenfranchised with the Republican Party. There are only a few pockets of conservative voters left in the state and they are only able to help carry the day for Republicans in ultra-low turnout elections on issues where campaign spending is at parity or to the Republican advantage, and where the Democratic and union grass-roots apparatus is not activated,” Miller’s memo said.
“There is no good way to sugarcoat this. … The Republican label is anathema to younger voters, women and Latinos — growing voter blocs with real significance to future elections.”
“We are going to be on permanent defense in California for the foreseeable future,” the memo went on, “and even then, we will need to pick our battles wisely and not spread ourselves too thin. While playing defense, we’re going to have to try and force the Democrats into making mistakes that we can use to score small victories and build momentum.”
Miller also admitted that the Republicans’ traditional funding base is the corporate world. It’s important to note this because the Republican base seems to be blissfully unaware of this fact, and the Libertarians who think they stand for freedom but vote Republican also seem unaware of this. Miller also claimed that the corporate world doesn’t want to help California Republicans anymore because they prefer to work with dominant Democrats.
Miller is not new to pointing out the inevitable failure of the Republican Party’s current path. In 2011, he stepped down as finance chairman after warning the party that they were speaking to just 30 percent of the electorate.
Democrats the nation wide should note Miller’s concern that conservatives can only carry the day when there is ultra-low turnout. This is why Republicans work so hard to depress the morale of the Democratic base by constantly bashing Obama, bashing any policy of Obama’s, concern trolling under fake IDs as disenchanted liberals, and using the allegedly Libertarian left to loudly denounce Obama as a tyrant who is just like Bush.
Jeff Miller is one of the few Republicans who are dealing with reality. He can see that there is no way out of the hole they’ve dug with their failed ideology except to force Democrats into making mistakes, aka, fear-mongering and lying about Democrats. Said fear-mongering is ironically why this memo was made public. If the Koch brothers hadn’t been improperly funneling money from hidden donors into California through a “non-profit” (hello, IRS “scandal”) labeled “Center to Protect Patient Rights” and “Americans for Responsible Leadership”, none of this would have come to light.
But then, the GOP’s brand collapse is hardly news to the rest of the civilized world; rather, this memo is just confirmation that Republicans know their brand is crap and all they have now is forcing Democrats into making errors and using the Koch brothers’ money to fear monger about policies that actually serve the people. So when they smug it up on TV and warn Americans about Obama spying on them through ObamaCare, just remember, they know. They know they are full of it but it’s all they have.
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