Charles Koch blew his money on Nikki Haley. Donald Trump owns this Republican Party | Opinion

There’s no other way to put it: Charles Koch swung and missed.

Koch — the conservative Kansas billionaire who, with his late brother David, has funded and powered conservative causes for decades — made a big bet against Donald Trump this presidential campaign season. Americans for Prosperity Action, an influential group largely funded with Koch money, in November endorsed Nikki Haley for the GOP nomination.

It was kind of a big deal. The problem? Haley isn’t going to win the nomination. The Republican Party is Donald Trump’s party now. Not even Charles Koch can change that.

Which is why the news site Vox this week proclaimed “the Koch network” one of the big losers in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. (Trump, of course, was the winner.)

Americans for Prosperity Action, the site reported, poured “tens of millions of dollars to Haley’s long-shot campaign” to break Trump’s grip on the party. New Hampshire was her best shot to put the former president on defense, and it failed.

Vox’s conclusion: “The Kochs might as well have lit their money on fire.”

Trump, of course, is delighted at this turn of events. “Bad timing Charles!” he taunted on Truth Social this week.

It’s hard to remember a time when the Kochs didn’t dominate conservative politics, both in Kansas and nationally. Whole libraries of books have been written about the duo, their history and their influence over the right. As late as 2015, most Republican candidates for president were trekking to a California resort in a bid for the brothers’ support.

These days there are signs that influence might be crumbling, just a little bit.

It’s not just the election, and not just nationally. Last fall, The Wichita Eagle’s Dion Lefler noted that the Kansas Republican Party — long a Koch fiefdom — sent out a weekly email newsletter that included an attack on Americans for Prosperity by state Sen. Alicia Straub.

That critique, Lefler noted, once would have been “unimaginable.”

Now? Not so much.

Libertarians funded Tea Party, opposition to expanding Medicaid

Here’s what happened: Trump. Since the beginning of his presidential odyssey back in 2015, Trump has used the organs of the conservative movement when it suited him — remember all those phone-in interviews on “Fox & Friends?” — and co-opted others outright. Everybody else he sidestepped, muscled out or blacklisted.

He sidestepped the Kochs. The decision was clearly mutual. “I don’t need their money or bad ideas,” Trump sniffed in 2018.

This makes some sense. While the Kochs have generously funded conservative causes, it was always with a libertarian bent — they mostly didn’t want their businesses taxed or regulated. Trump’s authoritarian version of right-wing politics, which envisions using government power to punish enemies, was never going to be an easy fit.

If the Kochs didn’t create Trump, they surely had a hand in laying the foundation for Trumpism. They generously funded and nurtured the Tea Party movement, whose premise was that Barack Obama was a tyrant in the making because he wanted to make sure more Americans had adequate health care. The horrors!

The Tea Party — with its often-racist undercurrents — begat Trump the politician. And here we are.

Charles Koch, to be fair, seems to understand his role in all of this. In 2020, he openly lamented his part in helping deepen America’s divisions through hyperpartisanship. “Boy, did we screw up!” he wrote. “What a mess!”

Oops.

Koch will be fine. He’s still rich, and very influential. His lawyers and think tanks and lobbyists are still out there, battling taxes and regulations and (yes) health care: Americans for Prosperity is one of the fiercest opponents of expanding Medicaid in Kansas, remember. A number of legislators in Topeka are still in thrall to his political machine.

But he’s 88. His career is winding down. Trump is openly talking about blacklisting donors to Haley’s campaign, a group that surely includes the Kansas billionaire.

The Koch brothers were a dominant force in Republican politics for decades, and villains to many on the left. Now the party is moving on to Trumpism. What comes next will be worse.