Koch-Backed Group Targets GOP Lawmaker Open To Obamacare Medicaid Expansion

[TomCADem]

Source: TPM

As part of its state-by-state effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, a group backed by billionaire conservative benefactors Charles and David Koch is going after a Republican lawmaker in Virginia who has signaled an openness to the law's Medicaid expansion.

An article published Saturday in The New York Times details how the conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity is employing a grassroots campaign to pressure state lawmakers to reject the Medicaid expansion under the health care law.


The group is currently going all out in Virginia, where this year's gubernatorial race pits a Democrat who favors expansion (Terry McAuliffe) against a Republican who opposes (Ken Cuccinelli). It's also targeting Republican state Sen. Emmett W. Hanger Jr., who is considering signing off on the expansion.

“This has been one of those trench warfare kind of efforts for a year now, and I think it is one of those hidden stories of the whole fight against Obamacare,” Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, told the Times. “It’s not flashy; it’s just in a whole bunch of state capitals and in the districts of a whole lot of state legislators, but it’s such a crucial aspect of the overall long-term effort to roll back Obamacare.”


Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/koch-backed-group-wages-trench-warfare-against-obamacare-medicaid-expansion

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It is worthwhile to remember that Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin are just figureheads. The real power behind the suicide caucus are the right wing billionaires who are willing to smack any Republican who flirts with sanity.

[Jack Rabbit]

1. Your commentary is spot on

The Tea Party is not America's domestic enemy, as Congressman Cohen told a TV interviewer this morning. The enemies are the right wing billionaires, of whom the Kochs are but two, who think they have the right to rule by divine right. This a major assault on democracy itself. The industrial/financial aristocracy that today seeks absolute power through Citizens United and the Trans-Pacific Partnership is no more an aristocracy (from the Greek meaning rule by the best) than was the landed aristocracy that ruled Europe from the Dark Ages through the Enlightenment, when the so-called "aristocrats" had their heads handed to them by the French Revolution.

We owe them no allegiance and vow to give them none. Their primacy over what is supposed to be the people's government must be destroyed.

[Faygo Kid]

3. +1

Well said. The Kochs are a blight upon this nation.

[IrishAyes]

2. Thanks for a great OP.

I agree a good deal with Jack too.

[Squinch]

4. Don't Republicans ever get tired of being led around by their noses?

[Wuddles440]

5. Boycott Georgia Pacific Products

As Georgia Pacific is an operating division of Koch Industries, avoid purchasing any consumer products they produce under such trade names such as Quilted Northern, Angel Soft, Brawny, Sparkle, Mardi Gras, Vanity Fair, and Dixie.

[gopiscrap]

6. welcome to DU

[okaawhatever]

7. We have to make sure Virginians aren't swayed by polls showing McAuliffe with a huge lead. I'm sure

that's what the Koch Brothers would love, for a bunch of Democrats to stay home and have another 2010 outcome.

[kiranon]

8. Need to co-opt the Koch brothers - make ACA profitable

for them in some way. Money may override ideology - it usually does.

[Myrina]

10. It IS profitable ... Wellpoint and Anthem just jacked up their forecasts ...

http://www.indystar.com/viewart/20131023/BUSINESS/310230014/WellPoint-raises-forecast-due-Obamacare-gains

[Myrina]

9. Are the Kochs pissed because they bought into paper/oil vs. insurance?

I don't understand their obsessive opposition to ACA, except in the context that they're pissed that insurance companies are going to get rich(er) & they don't own any.