.
3/27/2012, "The Crane Chronicles, Part I: How and Why Ed Crane Pushed the Koch Brothers Conspiracy Theory," Breitbart News
"It has emerged that Crane had been a key source for Jane Mayer--one
of the most rabidly anti-conservative journalists in America--in an
August 2010 New Yorker profile that elevated the Koch brothers conspiracy theory from the fringe to the mainstream.
Having trashed the Kochs and the Tea Party, Crane then used that
ostensibly independent, negative portrayal as ammunition in an effort to
consolidate his power within Cato.
In the run up to the historic 2010 Republican sweep in the midterm
congressional elections, many on the left and in the mainstream media
attempted to derail the Tea Party-led victory. At the center of the
left’s cross hairs were Charles and David Koch, heartland entrepreneurs
who have donated significant time and resources to libertarian and
conservative causes. In particular, the Kochs have donated in excess of
$30 million to the nation’s first libertarian think tank, the Cato
Institute, which they helped create in 1977.
In many ways, the culmination of the left-media attack on the Kochs was Mayer’s 9,966-word feature article in the August 30, 2010 issue of the New Yorker. Mayer’s bona fides as
an assassin for the left were well-established by that time; indeed,
Mayer does not really even pretend to be a balanced journalist. In
1995, she skyrocketed to left-wing darling status when she co-authored a
book attacking Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas by attempting to
prop up Anita Hill and her sensational charges....
Liberals quickly morphed Mayer’s New Yorker article into an
electoral bludgeon designed to slow the Tea Party, smear Charles and
David Koch, and make them social and political pariahs. The article
garnered 117,000 Facebook shares, 8,499 tweets on Twitter, and was
dubbed by Media Matters as a “landmark exposé” that represented the most
significant attack on the Tea Party in 2010 (though, at the ballot box
at least, an ineffective one). The Weekly Standard'’s Matthew Continetti noted
in a cover story entitled “The Paranoid Style In Liberal Politics: The
Left’s Obsession With The Koch Brothers” that the Mayer article had been
a left-wing sensation that “became a sort of Rosetta Stone for Koch
addicts. It was the template for any liberal wanting someone to blame
for all the trouble in the world. Mayer had unlocked the secrets of the
Kochtopus.”...
Mayer’s article was, of course, more than an assault on the Kochs; it
was a proxy attack on the the conservative and libertarian movements
writ large, and the Tea Party in particular, which was falsely portrayed
as a Koch-sponsored Astroturf movement. It now appears that Mayer’s
attack was also a false flag operation, in which the New Yorker attacked the Tea Party on behalf of an insider with an ax to grind--Ed Crane himself....
From the evidence now available, it would appear that Crane’s
strategy had long been in the works. He had collaborated with Jane Mayer
on her hyperbolic hit against Cato’s shareholders--the Kochs--in an
apparent effort to create a media sensation and an internal crisis at
Cato in order to wrest power from the Kochs and to consolidate his own
control. Moreover--and as will be clear from subsequent articles--it
appears that the increasingly public feud at Cato is being led by the
personal agenda of a single man: Ed Crane.
Many in the libertarian movement are struck by the irony that one of
its most respected leaders has become an exemplar of the libertarian
warning that power corrupts.
At the very moment when the nation is yearning for strong, principled
conservative leadership to combat Barack Obama, Crane has apparently
chosen to end his career at Cato--and to endanger Cato itself--in a
petty and self-serving game of brinkmanship."
======================
Ed Crane is out at Cato anyway:
6/25/2012, Cato reaches agreement on changes, one of which is that Ed Crane will depart in 6 months (Dec. 2012).
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