RK ARCHIVE - VA GOP - Koch Industries' Next Acquisition?

This weekend (May 30th), Virginia Republicans will choose new leadership for the Commonwealth's Grand Old Party. Among the serious contenders for first chair of the VA GOP is Delegate Jeff Frederick (R). Hailed by right-wing bloggers as "the face of the future," Frederick seems poised to win his Party's top seat.

While liberal bloggers in Northern Virginia practice their rhetorical gamesmanship tearing their fellow Democrats a proverbial new one, right-wing fringe groups have deftly moved into key leadership positions within Virginia's Republican Party.
The choice of the young and angry set of the conservative punditocracy, Frederick is also the beneficiary of a veritable truckload of campaign contributions from conservative extremist groups like the overtly obstructionist Americans for Prosperity and the more clandestine but equally insidious school-voucher lobby All Children Matter.

For example, Frederick has taken almost $50, 000 since 2002 from the Dominion Leadership Trust, a group with demonstrably strong financial ties to the radically anti-environmentalist group Americans for Prosperity.

Similarly, since he began his career in the General Assembly five or six years ago, Frederick has taken almost $11, 000 from the VA Conservative Action PAC, another far-right political action committee with financial ties to Koch and Fink's Americans for Prosperity.

Perhaps Frederick's most consistently strong relationship with conservative special interest groups is the young Republican's ties to All Children Matter, a lobbying firm for school choice-a euphemism for school vouchers and the ultimate de-funding of the public school system. Since 2002, Frederick has taken over $50, 000 from Michigan-based All Children Matter.

Virginia Republicans have a choice this weekend, a choice between flashy new leadership with ties to fringe conservative PACs that seek to undermine public education and promote the irresponsible belief that global warming is a hoax and the voices of moderation represented by delegates like William Fralin (R) and state senators like Emmett Hanger (R) embodied in the other choices for chair of the state GOP committee.

Comments

Just researching something the other day.. (Rebecca - 5/29/2008 11:39:38 AM)

I was researching the origins of the Democratic Leader Council (DLC) the other day and found that Koch industries have contributed heavily to the DLC. Does anyone else have any information about this?

Koch & DLC-no degrees of separation (venice - 5/29/2008 12:40:57 PM)

The Koch family has roots in the John Birch Society---remember them?. Koch Ind funds a variety of political orgs --- like the AFP who is tied to Cheney, Bush, et. al.

You have to wonder why they also help fund the DLC. Sort of like wondering why right wing pundits and spokesnuts praise a particular Democratic Presidential candidate.

The DLC and the John Birch Society (Rebecca - 5/29/2008 12:51:15 PM)

I don't disagree with everything that the JBS says. They don't like our imperialistic and expanionistic direction, but their views on immigration are positively medieval. However, it seems to me that the DLC policies are contradictive of one another. For instance, a lot of Bill Clinton's policies deregulated the financial sector and businesses laying the groundwork for a lot of what we see today which is making life hard for the middle class, not to speak of the poor. Yet the DLC claims to back unions and other policis which are there to help these people. One set of their policies makes their other goals impossible. It makes the social policies seem like window dressing to sucker people into letting them give free reign to corporations.

I think the Democrats should form a think tank to come up with more socially repsonsible business reguation philosophy.