'Boy, did we screw up there': Charles Koch now regrets backing the Tea Party

[toabb]

One of America’s most influential Republican donors has told of his regret at backing the Tea Party, in a remarkable about-face from a conservative hero whose financial support turned the movement into a political juggernaut.

Charles Koch, the 85-year-old libertarian tycoon, said that supporting the Tea Party, whose best-known figures included Sarah Palin, made partisan divisions in the United States far worse.

“Boy, did we screw up!” he writes in his new book. “What a mess!”

Mr Koch, whose company Koch Industries has spent more than $100 million (£75m) in lobbying over the past decade, was among the Tea Party’s biggest backers.

He supported the ideas of limited government interference, a rejection of universal healthcare and an embrace of right-wing populism put forward by the group, founded in 2009 in response to Barack Obama’s policies.

“We did not create the Tea Party,” Mr Koch told the Wall Street Journal, in an interview to promote his book Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World , out on November 17.

"We shared their concern about unsustainable government spending, and we supported some tea-party groups on that issue.

“But it seems to me the Tea Party was largely unsuccessful long-term, given that we’re coming off a Republican administration with the largest government spending in history.”

more… 'Boy, did we screw up there': Charles Koch now regrets backing the Tea Party

 

[puer.dei]

Well, he got that right!

 

[JonNC]

Well, he got that right!

Yes. It’s the populism that tends to be the problem.
The greatest issue for the next two generations will be how to pay off the national debt which is well over $125 trillion when various obligations such pensions and social security are included. It isn’t like we weren’t warned.

 

[RhodesianSon]

given that we’re coming off a Republican administration with the largest government spending in history.”

Because few people want that. If the Republicans want to win going forward they need to:

Support free college
Free health care
Expanded welfare coverage

But then they also need to double down on
Banning abortion
Repealing existing federal gun laws and letting the states make their own as strict or lenient as they wish
Locking down immigration
Protectionist trade policies

 

[ProVobis]

how to pay off the national debt which is well over $125 trillion

Piece of cake.

 

[JonNC]

JonNC:

how to pay off the national debt which is well over $125 trillion

Piece of cake.

Without raising taxes.
Without devaluing the currency.
Without defaulting.

 

[ProVobis]

They couldn’t raise taxes enough to pay for the military alone for one year.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

Should never listen to Koch. The Koch brothers were emblematic of the established wing of the Republican Party that was virtually indistinguishable from Democrats in certain critical ways. Primary being that they operated as corporate cronies. But a major point being that they backed open borders, open immigration and massive jobs programs for immigrants because they were all about the bottom line savings in labor when right into their own pockets. One of them was on record as essentially saying American workers are terrible, therefore we have to do this.