Richard Fink, the Koch brothers’ top political strategist, explained recently why they’re having trouble reaching the “middle third” of the country that’s relatively non-ideological:
“Yeah, we want to decrease regulations. Why? It’s because we can make more profit, OK? Yeah, cut government spending so we don’t have to pay so much taxes,” said Fink. “There’s truth in that….But the middle part of the country doesn’t see it that way.”
“When we focus on decreasing government spending, over-criminalization, decreasing taxes, it doesn’t do it, OK? We’ve been reaching the [middle] third by telling them what’s important — what we think is important should be important to them. And they’re not responding and don’t like it, OK? Well, we get business — what do we do? We want to find out what the customer wants, right, not what we want them to buy,” he said.
Imagine that. When the middle third of the country hears the message that regulations should be cut back so that corporations can make more money, it doesn’t respond well. So what’s the answer? Find out what they do respond to and use that as an excuse for less regulation instead. Ixnay on the ofitpray!
As Fink says, this is pretty ordinary marketing. Still, it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with. Obviously the Kochians feel like they need a new set of selling points for reduced corporate regulation, and it needs to be something that Joe and Jane Sixpack can identify with. I wonder what it’s going to be?
