By Bruce Edward Walker
However, it’s easier for such Democrats as Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi to vilify Charles and David Koch and, conversely, for Republicans to snicker at the estimated $74 million mostly blown by billionaire investor (in coal and coal-operated power plants, no less!) turned green-energy advocate Tom Steyer on Democratic campaigns while at the same time aiming no small amount of schadenfreude toward George Soros, the progressive billionaire financial speculator, fossil-fuel investor and convicted inside-trader.
I acknowledge a certain bemusement at progressives’ hypocrisy regarding the Koch brothers’ political expenditures while simultaneously defending the wheelbarrows of cash Mssrs. Steyer and Soros mostly wasted on this midterm. Nobody’s holding their breath waiting for any progressive to malign the millions of dollars Steyer donated to Senator-elect Gary Peters’ campaign, for example.
If progressives sincerely desired to curtail political spending, they’d join small-government advocates and the majority of midterm voters who believe, like Lott and Smith, “Growing campaign spending is a symptom, not the cause, of what ails our democracy.” It’s not yet as seemingly insurmountable as the wall destroyed 25 years ago, but it’s time to significantly reduce government’s size before it collapses under either its own weight or the rancor of the ruled.
