David Koch will keep the rabble out.
The Koch brothers have made no secret about their intent to spend close to a billion dollars in 2016, but they've been a bit cagey about exactly where that money will be going. They have
broadly hinted that there are five Republicans from which they plan to choose—Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, former Florida governor and dynastic scion Jeb Bush, and Sens. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul. Their problem is that there are a bunch of other billionaires out there backing a bunch of the other, shall we say more fringey, candidates. The Kochs have apparently decided they want to force the "cream" to rise to the top, so they'll be spending on
all of their preferred candidates in the primary, to hasten the departure of the rest.
That's what David Koch hinted at anyway, in an interview Saturday, saying the brothers "are thinking of supporting several Republicans. […] If we're happy with the policies that these individuals are supporting, we'll finance their campaigns." As if any of the Republican candidates have an inch of difference between them on the issues the Kochs care about—taxes and government regulations and killing Obamacare. No, what David Koch is talking about is what he and his brother care most about: winning, and this analysis from Washington Post's Paul Waldman nails it.
Up until now, the Koch brothers hadn't indicated that they'd be taking a side in the primaries. It almost seemed that they viewed that as the kind of thing amateurs like Sheldon Adelson do, throwing money at some candidate based on overly irrational personal feelings, while they keep focused on the real goal of getting a Republican—any Republican—into the White House. By saying they're going to support several candidates in the primaries, the Kochs are pledging to accelerate the winnowing process, by which the race's chaff can be sloughed off and the focus can stay on the serious contenders. […]
[…] This year, multiple candidates could have billionaires feeding them the money they need to keep their campaigns active deep into the primary season. If you're a thoughtful Republican, a primary with this many candidates is a cacophonous mess, full of extremist cranks squabbling with each other and taking progressively nastier potshots at the leaders, one of whom will end up as the nominee. The longer it goes, the more that nominee has to pander to the base and the less time he or she will have to focus on Hillary Clinton.
So it's going to be billionaire v. billionaire in the primaries. The last thing the Kochs want is all the hard work and money they spent in the last several cycles to take over the Republican party lost because of the clown show this primary promises to be. They don't intend to lose their grip on the party and they don't intend to lose in 2016.