Despite the virulent, yet vacuous rhetoric flowing out of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, that the Koch Brothers are un-American, and despite the impression Reid intends to impose, that the Democratic Party is dead-set against the Koch Brothers' buying American politics, one Democratic US Senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, actually likes the Koch Brothers, and his publically distanced himself from the Senate Majority Leader's dead-on-arrival smear campaign against them.
Sen. Joe Manchin on Thursday strongly defended the Koch brothers from attacks by fellow Democrats, saying the wealthy and politically active businessmen are taxpaying Americans who are creating jobs.
“People want jobs. You don’t beat up people. I mean, I don’t agree with their politics or philosophically, but, you know, they’re Americans, they’re doing— paying their taxes,” Manchin said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”
What is especially revealing about this exchange? A Democratic Senator shared his views on FOX News, and left-wing Politico reports it! Wow! If the liberal screed-trolls on Patch or elsewhere take exception to this statement, then they have no credibility to comment.
I have a prediction to make, based on a supposition.
If the Republicans take the US Senate in 2014, I predict that Joe Manchin will switch parties and join the GOP.
Republican House Rep Shelley Moore Capito is poised to capture the seat vacated by Jay Rockefeller, who decided not to run again. The Republicans in reliably Blue Mountain West Virginia have increased their numbers in the state legislature, enough that they could capture the statehouse for the first time in decades.
And where do these developments leave the conservative former Governor?
Manchin has led the fight for delaying the individual mandate of Obamacare by one year. He is pro-Second Amendment, pro-life, pro-coal, pro-business, and has voted with the Republicans against gun control and other social moves, like closing the faked gender gap
Who can forget the commercial he ran in 2010, in which he shot bullet through the Cap and Trade bill, which died in a Democratically-controlled Senate even after the Democratically controlled house passed it, with only eight GOP votes to help it along.
The junior US Senator has played the "centrist" card the moment he enter the US Senate. He advertised himself as a staunch fiscal conservative, too. One has to wonder if Manchin can remain in the Democratic Party, which has gone from slouching to rushing toward fiscal oblivion and moral bankruptcy, especially since President Obama has dragged his coalition so far to the left and far away from the values of West Virginia voters.
If nothing else, Manchin is not so much a Koch fiend as a Koch friend, since the Brothers support carbon energy, as well as the idea that Americans should be able to get a good job and make money as opposed to suffer at the hands of a big, abusive, intrusive federal government. Senator Manchin may be shouting "God Bless the Koch Brothers!" very soon, just as Republicans US Senator David Vitter announced last month.
Prediction: If the Republicans recapture the US Senate, and with a strong majority, like 58-59 seats (which is certainly possible, if not probable, as Independent Angus King of Maine has pondered caucusing with the potential GOP Majority), then expect fiscally-socially conservative Democrat Manchin to announce his departure from the Dems and join the GOP, a party which better aligns with the values of his home state.
Arthur Christopher Schaper is a teacher-turned-writer on topics both timeless and timely; political, cultural, and eternal. A life-long Southern California resident, Arthur currently lives in Torrance.
