The myth of the altruistic rich Democrat donors

Matthew Continetti:

Some lies just won’t go away. In February the Washington Post published an article with the following headline: “Why There’s No Democratic Version of the Koch Brothers’ Organization.” It was the umpteenth attempt to explain, in a particularly simplistic manner, how the millionaires and billionaires who donate money to the Democratic Party are nothing, absolutely nothing, like those meanie cancer research philanthropists Charles and David Koch.

The author, Reid Wilson, interviewed “Democratic strategists who deal frequently with high-dollar donors,” and these Democratic strategists told him, strategically, that their high-dollar donors are better than Republican ones. “For the Koch brothers, electing the right candidate can mean a financial windfall,” Wilson wrote. “Democratic donors revolve more around social issues.” On the one hand you have petty, greedy rich men, and on the other you have committed liberals willing to sacrifice for causes they believe in. The morality play writes itself.
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Does Reid Wilson believe in Santa Claus? His willingness to suspend disbelief when confronted with the image of a mythic creature—the un-self-interested liberal—suggests as much. The words “labor” and “union” appear nowhere in his article, despite the fact that unions are 6 of the 10 top all-time donors recently compiled by OpenSecrets.org, despite the fact that unions spent some $4.4 billion on politics between 2005 and 2011. (Incidentally, every member of the OpenSecrets.org top ten either leaned Democratic or split money evenly between the two parties. The Democrats are not hurting for money.)

Unions, their leadership, and their staff see political giving as “an investment,” any non-cross-eyed observer of the political scene would agree, with donations laundered back to the SEIU, AFSCME, NEA, UAW, and others in the form of generous and unsustainable pensions, wage laws benefiting closed shops over free labor, government-mandated dues and contracts, and job protections that make it difficult even for child predators to be fired from schools. That’s an ROI the hosts of the Shark Tank would envy.

Nor did Wilson see fit to mention trial lawyers and other attorneys, whose giving disproportionately favors the Democratic Party, and who are repaid for their donations with opposition to tort reform, and with increased regulations that amount to permanent employment programs for attorneys practicing regulatory, tax, M&A, antitrust, and campaign finance law. But perhaps lawyers don’t figure in Wilson’s calculus. We all know how altruistic and big-hearted they are.

“The coordination between big donors that the Koch network so ably facilitates just doesn’t exist on the Democratic side,” Wilson writes. His Democratic sources must not have been invited to the recent meetings of the Democracy Alliance, the secret organization of liberal donors that coordinates giving and builds campaign infrastructure. His sources must not be members of the Democracy Initiative, a vast coalition of liberal interest groups that meets to plan strategy, or of the Campaign for America’s Future. His sources must never have contributed to the online donation clearinghouse Act Blue. Of all of the thousands of Democratic strategists circling the D.C. waters for prey, Wilson seems to have spoken to the poorest and least connected ones available.
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There is much more.

There are also the alternative energy rent seekers who have been rewarded with billions in loans as a return on their investment in Obama and Democrats.  Many of those loans went into default.  The bad investments in inefficient energy were enough to buy 1,400 F-35 fighters.

The Democrat derangement about the Koch brothers stems from a desire to shut up and shut down any opposition to their bad policies.