[jeffkrol]

Not that it is really surprising.
Libertarian war........

Clearly, many libertarians who have long been funded by the Kochs genuinely believe that their cause is about promoting individual liberty and peace by reducing the role of the government—in other words, lofty, laudable goals, not just some hackish partisan political agenda. Suddenly, however, they are confronted with the news that the Koch brothers, who control half the seats on Cato’s board, have, as the Cato Chairman Bob Levy told the Washington Post, been choosing “Koch operatives,” their goal being to align the institute more closely with the Republican Party.

Indeed, several eye-opening insider accounts appeared over the weekend, suggesting that what Charles Koch, the C.E.O. of Koch Industries, essentially wants is to transform Cato into an “ammo” shop, manufacturing whatever ordnance it takes stop President Obama from getting re-elected next November. In a fascinating post appearing at the Volokh Conspiracy, Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, writes about a meeting last November between, on one side, David Koch and several Koch functionaries, and, on the other, Cato Chairman Bob Levy:

They told Bob that they intended to use their board majority to remove Ed Crane from Cato and transform our Institute into an intellectual ammo-shop for Americans for Prosperity and other allied (presumably, Koch-controlled) organizations.

Americans for Prosperity, co-founded and heavily funded by David Koch, is an ostensibly non-partisan advocacy group, but, according to Taylor, the Koch faction’s complaint about Cato was that he “wasn’t doing enough to defeat President Obama in November and that we weren’t working closely enough with grass roots activists like those at AFP.”

As proof that the Kochs are more interested in achieving Republican victory than in promoting libertarianism, Taylor goes on to examine their candidates for Cato’s board, noting that the roster includes individuals who have derided libertarians, opposed gay rights, and supported former President George W. Bush and the Iraq War, in defiance of libertarian principles. In summary, Taylor declares that the Kochs’ insistence that they are merely insuring that Cato hews to its principles, is, in a word, “dishonest.”

Read more News Desk: Kochs vs. Cato, Round Two : The New Yorker