If the Koch Brothers started their own political party...
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  If the Koch Brothers started their own political party...
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Author Topic: If the Koch Brothers started their own political party...  (Read 1238 times)
Indy Texas
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« on: April 27, 2014, 11:49:24 PM »

Suppose Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Tax Reform felt the GOP was no longer sufficiently anti-tax and was too bogged down in social issues, and instead the Koch brothers, along with Grover Norquist, Peter Thiel and Richard Mellon Scaife opted to create their own third party that was basically as far to the right as possible on tax and spending issues, favored replacing public schools and universities with block grants to non-profit charter schools and for-profit education companies, favored turning Silicon Valley into a Hong Kong-style "special economic zone" with zero taxation, favored laxer gun control but felt the rights of property owners trump the rights of gun owners (no Georgia-style open carry), favored same sex marriage (but not anti-discrimination laws), and favored amnesty for illegal immigrants and a streamlined immigration process (gotta get that cheap labor from somewhere).

Where would it perform the best? Where would it take votes away from Republicans? Where would it take votes away from Democrats?
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Meursault
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« Reply #1 on: April 28, 2014, 01:24:37 AM »

They'd just (re-)take the Libertarian Party if they were going to do that.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #2 on: April 28, 2014, 04:31:32 AM »

I don't know what would happen, but it would be a very informative experiment on just how many votes money can buy.
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Mordecai
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« Reply #3 on: April 28, 2014, 06:32:26 AM »

They'd just (re-)take the Libertarian Party if they were going to do that.

I agree with this. If they were forced to abandon the Republican Party for whatever reason they would probably latch on to the Libertarian Party, which is much more representative of their actual views.

But I really don't see abandonment of the Republican Party happening. It would require too much work to build up a third party to make it nationally competitive against both the Republicans and Democrats, not to mention convincing a significant chunk of the population to vote Libertarian.
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Simfan34
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« Reply #4 on: April 28, 2014, 05:47:12 PM »

Hong Kong has taxes. I mean I don't know how effective it would be; are we talking strictly the Koch Brothers here or a whole class of people?
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morgieb
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« Reply #5 on: April 29, 2014, 03:54:07 AM »

Basically just sounds like the Libertarian Party, or the IPA Party.

Not sure where they'd perform best. Their base would be rich old white guys though.
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Marnetmar
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« Reply #6 on: April 30, 2014, 11:03:02 AM »

They'd just (re-)take the Libertarian Party if they were going to do that.
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BaconBacon96
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« Reply #7 on: April 30, 2014, 03:06:53 PM »

They would go to the Libertarian Party before they did this.

But if they did do this, they might win a Representative from Silicon Valley and maybe get 5% of the vote in states like New Hampshire.
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FEMA Camp Administrator
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« Reply #8 on: April 30, 2014, 03:09:00 PM »

Basically just sounds like the Libertarian Party, or the IPA Party.

Not sure where they'd perform best. Their base would be rich old white guys though.

An Indian Pale Ale party? I could get behind that.
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Kushahontas
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« Reply #9 on: May 02, 2014, 10:50:08 AM »

Basically just sounds like the Libertarian Party, or the IPA Party.

Not sure where they'd perform best. Their base would be rich old white guys though.

An Indian Pale Ale party? I could get behind that.
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Mordecai
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« Reply #10 on: May 13, 2014, 08:59:38 AM »

Basically just sounds like the Libertarian Party, or the IPA Party.

Not sure where they'd perform best. Their base would be rich old white guys though.

And college libertarians.
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