Obama 2012 Bashes Koch Brothers

The Obama for America organization is bashing the Koch Brothers as dishonest "billionaire brothers" in a fundraising e-mail blasting the Scott Walker allies:

One of the main special-interest political groups, 'Americans for Prosperity,' announced yesterday that they're launching an expensive national campaign to pin the blame for high gas prices on President Obama.

There's nothing unusual in Washington about this sort of announcement, but it caught my eye because Americans for Prosperity isn't as well meaning as its name makes it sound. In fact, it's a prime example of the kind of special-interest groups that plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars this election cycle to defeat the President in order to promote their agenda. Its backers are the famous Koch brothers, billionaires who, according to one profile, believe in 'minimal social services for the needy and much less oversight of industry, especially environmental regulation.'

That's right: A couple of billionaire oil men are saying that it's all President Obama's fault that Americans are getting gouged at the pump while oil companies bring in record profits. And now they'll be spending the summer touting carefully orchestrated 'grassroots' protests across the country, with two goals in mind: damaging President Obama, and deflecting people's frustration about gas prices so their own profit margins stay safe.

But while the Koch brothers have been plotting a campaign paid for by oil company interests and designed to mislead people instead of empowering them, we've been building ours one person at a time. Since last Wednesday, thousands of first-time donors matched another supporter's pledge to give what they could. People are even connecting by exchanging messages about why they're stepping up to own a piece of this campaign.

Grab a stake in this movement by matching another supporter's $5 donation today.

Conservative candidates relied on these brothers' deep pockets during the 2010 elections, and for many of them, it was a good bet. Just last month, most of our major opponents showed up at an Americans for Prosperity event to say just how much they want that help again in 2012 -- and thanks to the Citizens United decision, the Kochs can spend as much as they want on front groups and disinformation campaigns aimed at misleading Americans about the President's record.

They can flood the airwaves with negative ads. They can launch smear campaigns to divert attention away from what matters.

That's exactly the kind of politics our campaign is aiming to change. And that's why we're building this organization not by checks from people like the Kochs, but with a grassroots match drive whose purpose is to recruit the most people into this campaign, not just raise the most dollars.