The Koch brothers are not going to be using their money this cycle to save the Republicans from Donald Trump, says a spokesman.
"We have no plans to get involved in the primary," said James Davis, spokesman for Freedom Partners, the Koch brothers’ political umbrella group. He would not elaborate on what the brothers' strategy would be for the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.
Three sources close to the Kochs said the brothers made the decision because they were concerned that spending millions of dollars attacking Trump would be money wasted, since they had not yet seen any attack on Trump stick.
The Kochs have also been in this game long enough to know that there are levers of power that are more important for their end game than the White House. After all, what good is having the White House if the Senate goes back to Democrats? And they can look ahead to 2020 and redistricting, so they know shoring up and increasing their state level wins is critical. Jane Mayer, who really did write the book on the Kochs, explained the strategy a few weeks ago:
Where the influence of money goes so much further, and what people who are interested in this need to take a look at, is the lower levels: the state and even local elections. There's Koch money that's been going into school board races, questions about funding mass transit in Tennessee, or funding a zoo in Ohio. They're fighting the expansion of Medicaid in South Dakota and all over the country. Their organizations are flooding money into universities and colleges in order to try and recruit young people to their point of view and then train them as cadres to go into their political groups. It's a comprehensive system to change America. So presidential politics certainly is the splashiest arena, but it's not actually the place where they have the most influence.
Here's where we need to be like the Kochs. The smart money right now isn't in the presidential primaries. It's in fighting the Kochs on all our own home turfs.
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