Ezra Klein on the Koch Brothers

They aren't puppet-masters:

The fixation on the Koch brothers is undoubtedly good for organizing — there’s a leadership vacuum in the Republican Party, which means organizers need to create foils. It’s also arguably healthy for rich guys who want to buy up the political system to face some risk of public backlash. And insofar as the Koch brothers are a symbol of the way that self-interested corporate money drives and distorts the Republican Party’s views on markets, that’s a useful dynamic to point out. But when it gets taken too far — when the Koch brothers and other players become overly causal in the way people view politics — that sort of analysis can lead to consequential errors.


On the left, for instance, the theory that Republicans were extremely responsive to the health-care industry was part of what led to the Obama administration’s effort to secure the support or neutrality of every major health-related interest group. Similarly, their sense that the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups could drive Republicans was important while they were constructing the stimulus. As it happened, they largely succeeded on winning industry neutrality both times, but that meant they ended up giving away a lot of good policy away in return for corporate support that led to approximately no Republican votes.

If they’d had a more realistic understanding of the Republican Party as an organization that was driven by a desire to win the next election and would thus oppose whatever Democrats offered, the policy might have ended up being better and the political strategy might have been more effective. In general, the Koch brothers are in a similar category: Influential political players court them for their money, work with them when it suits their purposes and ignore them otherwise. That makes them a lot more powerful than you or me, and certainly worthy of attention. But it doesn’t make them into a grand unified theory of conservative politics,and people should be skeptical when they’re presented as such.

I agree.  Sometimes it is easy to blame certain individuals, and conspiracy theories sometimes feel right.  I wonder why Governor Walker and Governor Kasich seem to be playing out of the exact same playbook, and it seems odd, but I doubt that there is one guy or group behind everything.  The Koch brothers have been involved in all kinds of groups, but they still won't carry the day, at least not every day.