The Koch brothers’ grand plan to liberate the poor

*Turkeys for votes? Thanks to Henry Flores for sending us this article. VL

By Greg Sargent, The Washington Post

The other day I noted that the Koch brothers were funding a new effort to win over Latino voters to the Republican Party by offering them an array of community services, combined with a healthy dose of conservative anti-government re-education programs. This might not work, I argued, since Latino voters tend to agree with the Democratic Party on economic and health care issues, in addition to immigration, raising questions as to why telling them that government is bad for them would prove particularly persuasive.

But, via Politico’s Ken Vogel, it turns out that this series of programs is much broader and more ambitious than we previously knew:

The political operation created by the billionaire conservative mega-donors Charles and David Koch is quietly investing millions of dollars in programs to win over an unlikely demographic target for their brand of small-government conservatism ― poor people.

The outreach includes everything from turkey giveaways, GED training and English-language instruction for Hispanic immigrants to community holiday meals and healthy living classes for predominantly African American groups to vocational training and couponing classes for the under-employed. The strategy, according to sources familiar with it and documents reviewed by POLITICO, calls for presenting a more compassionate side of the brothers’ politics to new audiences, while fighting the perception that their groups are merely fronts for rich Republicans seeking to game the political process for personal gain.

The efforts include a healthy dose of proselytizing about free enterprise and how it can do more than government to lift people out of poverty.

As one Koch network official puts it: “We want people to know that they can earn their own success. They don’t need the government to give it to them.” That’s in line with the animating ideological idea behind the program to win over Latinos.

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