Politics

Who’s Really Corrupting Politics with Huge Gobs of Money?

It’s not often that a chart almost makes me spit out my coffee. But last night while reading through a Vox article purporting to demonstrate how the Koch Brothers and other conservative mega-donors are allegedly weakening the Republican Party, I almost ruined my keyboard. 

The article’s thesis was interesting — it asserted that since Republican donors are increasingly directing their money to outside groups, the party itself exercises less control and influence within the broader conservative movement. That’s quite plausible. After all, the party can’t control those it doesn’t employ, and independent activists have interests and priorities all their own. 

The problem with the piece is the evidence used to back up this argument. Vox writer Jeff Stein relies on research from the Scholars Strategy Network, a far-Left research initiative run by Harvard University’s Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez that purports to track shifts in spending on outside advocacy groups. According to the Network’s website, this information will be used to, “ask how these shifts contribute to GOP extremism, government gridlock, and public policies that spur economic inequality.”