Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) criticized his colleague Jerry Moran (R., Kan.) for advancing the "Republican Koch agenda." While speaking on the Senate floor, Moran had read from a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Charles Koch, who Reid has described as "un-American."
"My Republican colleagues," Reid said, are "falling all over themselves" to advance the "radical philosophy" of Charles and David Koch, who has frequently sought to undermine America by donating money to hospitals and the arts.
Democrats, on the other hand, would never kowtow to wealthy liberals such as Tom Steyer (and his older, poorer brother, Jim), who has pledged to spend at least $100 million backing Democrats who support aggressive government action to address the scientific theory known as "climate change."
Well, maybe they would. Because, as Reid has previously explained, Steyer is nothing like the Koch brothers. "He is not trying to buy America, he’s concerned about climate change." So it’s perfectly natural that Reid and his fellow Democrats would fly to California to attend a fundraiser with Steyer and failed presidential candidate Al Gore, and then, a couple weeks later, stage an all-night climate-change talk-a-thon on the Senate floor. They have no interest in Steyer’s checkbook, they’re just concerned about Mother Earth (even though they’ve yet to propose any actual legislation on this front).
Tom Steyer was certainly pleased with Senate Democrats:
We need our leaders to tackle climate change head-on. I applaud the 28 senators that stood #Up4Climate last night.
— Tom Steyer (@TomSteyer) March 11, 2014
What an improbable coincidence it will be if their next campaign finance report shows donations from NextGen Climate Action, Steyer's new Super PAC. Obviously, if the Koch brothers had tweeted praise for Republican Senators staging an all-night talk-a-thin in support of cancer research, for example, Reid would be up in arms. But this is different, because Tom Steyer "is concerned about climate change."
Meanwhile, Reid continues to be a Koch-teasing mouthpiece, for example, by praising journalists at Democrat-friendly networks for following his lead:
Watch @JoyAnnReid discuss the Koch Brothers. She tells it like it is. http://t.co/tgZMB0Os4V
— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) April 4, 2014
One wonders if, at some point, Democrats might reconsider whether Harry Reid is the best spokesman for the anti-Koch campaign, given his own extensive experience gaming the political system to enrich himself and those around him.