And now a public controversy has erupted over one of its dean search finalists: Bradley A. Smith, Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law at Capital, a well known conservative campaign finance scholar and former chair of the Federal Election Commission under President George W. Bush. When Professor Smith visited Case on March 24 for his day of interviews and meetings, opponents of his appointment launched CaseAgainstSmith.comThe anti-Smith website focuses repeatedly on the fact that Smith was associated, at various points in his career, with institutions which received funding from the Koch Foundation.
Much like the Koch Derangement Syndrome which was prevalent in Madison, WI, during the takeover of the Capitol, so too the supposed "students, alumni, and concerned members of the Case Western community" (see bottom of website) who are running the campaign against Smith use the Koch connection to denigrate Smith's qualifications. From the website (emphasis mine):
Radical groups funded by the Koch brothers have recently begun unprecedented assaults against working families across the country. Bradley Smith’s associated activities are tied to the Koch Brothers.
Bradley Smith is a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute. (Goldwater Institute; Center for Competitive Politics)
■The Koch Brothers Fund The Goldwater Institute. The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation contributed at least $75,000 to the organization. (Media Matters, March, 2011)That's right folks, this group simply is toeing the Media Matters anti-Koch line. The group does not identify who is behind it or who its members are.
Bradley Smith is on the Board of Scholars at The Mackinac Institute. (Mackinac Institute)
■The Koch Brothers Fund The Mackinac Center For Public Policy. The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the Koch controlled Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation contributed at least $65,000 to the organization. (Media Matters, March, 2011)
Bradley Smith is on The Board Of Trustees of The Buckeye Institute. (Center for Competitive Politics)
■The Koch Brothers Fund The Buckeye Institute. The Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and Koch controlled Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation contributed at least $55,946 to the organization. (Media Matters, March, 2011)
Now you see the pernicious nature of what Media Matters and Think Progress are doing. They are establishing associational purity tests which effectively exclude a wide range of conservative scholars. There is no such associational test, by contrast, excluding all those who ever were associated with an entity to which George Soros donated money.
The actions by the group at Case Western demonstrate the dangers to conservatives from Koch Derangement Syndrome. The target is not the Koch brothers, it is the entire conservative movement.
Update: The group goes to great lengths to conceal who is behind it, including registering the domain via a proxy service:
--------------------------------------------
Related Posts:
The Culture of Jumping To Conclusions At Widener Law School
What If Christine O'Donnell Were Right About The First Amendment?
Will Law Professors Boycott The Inauguration?
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube
Visit the Legal Insurrection Shop on CafePress!
It's not that unusual for site owners to use a proxy registration service. I'm sure a few conservative bloggers use a proxy registration service to keep the left-wing nutjobs from tracking them down. However, it seems that the domain is registered through Godaddy.com's registration service.
ReplyDeleteOn a different note, when are conservatives going to fight back with Soros Derangement Syndrome? It's time to call out every public official or organization that has ties to George Soros. Oh wait, that's almost everyone on the left...
Wow. It sure seems the attempt to make the pro-liberty Koch Brothers as radioactive as Fukushima sushi is proof of a core meltdown of not only the Left but of America generally, as smears and hateful irrationality are now so hohum commonplace, they mostly evince only eyerolling on the Right and not even a bat of an eye by the big middle.
ReplyDeleteEither Ryan's fiscal sanity, Paul's fiscal sobriety, Walker's standing up to unions, Christie's blustering backbone, Palin's strength and grace under attack, Trump's recent stunts, Jacobson's tell it like it is blog, and lots of constitutionally therapeutic Tea will start detoxing our system, or we need to take massive quantitities of iodized salts, stat.
I think it was Powerline who pointed out some comparisons between KochBros and GE. I use them in commenting at various blogs.
ReplyDeleteWhich company employs increasing numbers of Americans, which outsources jobs?
Which pays taxes?
Which uses political influence to expand their business, which tries to grow through running a better business?
And Koch is so much easier to spell than Halliburton!
ReplyDeleteStrange. Was trying to look a bit into that site and I found this:
ReplyDeletehttp://caseagainstsmith.com/?page_id=69
Which links to a company owned by Dell Schnaze. I haven't really put together the connection yet, as Dell is apparently a libertarian with a rather colorful history, maybe the site creator was just bored?