Even as Charles Koch was assembling scholars and underwriting think tanks on two coasts, he was also testing electoral politics. Neither of the two main parties was demolition-minded enough for his tastes. He seemed to hold the Republican Party in greater contempt, though, because of what he took to be its leaders’ dishonesty. Their claim to stand for free markets was manifest fraud: the GOP was the party “of business accommodation and partnership with government,” sneered Koch. “If this is our only hope then we are doomed.”71
