Koch Industries has released a new ad campaign calling for an end to “the divide” in America, signaling that the billionaire Koch brothers are retreating from their position as key underwriters of the Republican Party.
Koch Industries has come out with an ad, accompanied by the new website EndTheDivide.com, that seeks to forge a national consensus around issues that the Kochs apparently feel no longer belong in Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
“We want to have an open conversation about removing barriers to opportunity and progress. Our aim is to replace America’s two-tiered, winner-take-all system with one free and open society where all can win” according to the website, which identifies “Removing Barriers” (criminal justice reform), “Promoting Fairness” (ending corporate welfare) and “Protecting Expression” as paramount issues.
The ad comes on the heels of a visible exit from the Republican Establishment by the Koch Brothers and their many paid operatives in the political advocacy business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxSdJqh5JIc
As Breitbart News first reported, the Koch Brothers’ “secret bank” in the D.C. Beltway decided to pull out of supporting the Republican candidate in the 2016 election after the field got narrowed down to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. The move followed Charles Koch’s condemnation of Trump’s temporary moratorium on Muslim migration to the United States, calling Trump’s proposals “reminiscent of Nazi Germany.”
Libertarian Party chairman Nicholas Sarwark then made an extended appeal at his party’s convention in Orlando to obtain Koch funding for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, saying that it’s time for the libertarian-leaning Koch Brothers to “come home.”
For a handful of years since the Citizens United decision, the Koch Brothers, financiers of advocacy groups including Americans For Prosperity, managed to monopolize the professional conservative movement, pushing for pro-immigration policies and criminal justice reform for drug offenders. Their influence on the movement allowed hostile mainstream media organizations to paint the tea party uprising as a corporate AstroTurf plot to benefit Koch financial interests. But the Republican electorate’s support for Trump in this primary season effectively knocked the Kochs’ agenda off the table in the presidential race.
The Kochs’ newfound call for national unity suggests a Koch retreat from the Republican Party for the foreseeable future and a possible opening for the party to experience an anti-globalist policy renewal.
Americans for Prosperity did not immediately return a request for comment for this report.
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