As George Orwell envisioned in “1984,” statists need an enemy to distract people from the failures of their corrosive ideology. In that seminal novel, the enemy was Emmanuel Goldstein, and a period of “Two Minutes Hate” was staged by the ruling party to keep the public sufficiently distracted. Democrats and their media allies, well aware they too must keep the public distracted from their failed policies heading into the 2014 elections, have created two Emmanuel Goldsteins of their very own: billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

A screed published Monday by the New York Times editorial board sets the tone. “Democrats have for too long been passive in the face of the vast amounts of corporate money, most of it secret, that are being spent to evict them from office and dismantle their policies,” the paper breathlessly states. “By far the largest voice in many of this year’s political races, for example, has been that of the Koch brothers, who have spent tens of millions of dollars peddling phony stories about the impact of health care reform, all in order to put Republicans in control of the Senate after the November elections.”

As the Times reveals, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is leading the charge, noting that in a recent speech, Reid "pointed out that the fundamental purpose of the Kochs’ spending is to rig the economic system for their benefit and for that of other oligarchs.“ The insinuation is obvious: it is the "evil rich” Koch brothers and their small cabal of equally evil and powerful allies against the rest of us. The paper further notes that the Democrat National Committee (DNC) has set up a website, www.kochaddiction.com, dedicated solely to promoting that proposition, and “to remind voters of just what the Kochs stand for, and why they raised $407 million in the 2012 election.”

After reading all that, one might be tempted to conclude that the Koch brothers are among the heaviest hitters in American politics. This, of course, is false. As the website OpenSecrets.org reveals, among the top all-time donors from the years 1989-2014, the Koch brothers come in at – wait for it – number 59. The same website further reveals that 6 of the top 10 political donors are unions, who overwhelmingly favor Democrats with their campaign contributions by margins of 91 precent or greater, compared to what they give Republicans.

For Democrats, such inconvenient realities are irrelevant. As the New York Daily News reveals, the Democrats are “gambling” on the idea that if they can turn Americans against the Kochs, they will be turned against the Republican candidates the Kochs support. "When you connect the dots for the people,“ said Democratic adviser Chris Lehane, "the light bulb comes on.”

Unfortunately for Democrats, the light has indeed come on for many Americans, but the illumination is shining on the disaster of ObamaCare, which has become  toxic for Democrats – and they know it. Hence the hysteria, once again evinced by Harry Reid, who is determined to convince Americans that the Koch brothers are liars – less than a month after he labeled every American with a “horror story” about ObamaCare as being equally mendacious. That would be the same Harry Reid who lied unabashedly about Mitt Romney not paying any income taxes for ten years.

Yet with regard to the Kochs and their hard-earned wealth, (they inherited a small oil company from their father and turned it into a multi-product conglomerate) Reid remains as incendiary as ever. "I guess if you make that much money, you can make these immoral decisions,“ he said in a recent Senate speech. "The Koch brothers are about as un-American as anyone I can imagine.”

An editorial in yesterday's New York Post reveals how despicable Reid’s characterization truly is. It noted that David Koch has donated a whopping $100 million to the New York-Presbyterian Hospital to help them construct a state-of-the-art ambulatory center. The Post further notes that in the last 14 years, Koch has donated $629 million to more than three dozen New York City institutions, including the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the American Ballet Theater, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Columbia University. “In short, many New Yorkers have had their lives enriched by David Koch’s munificence, and some may even have had their lives saved,” the paper states.

Nonetheless, the progressive stalwarts and Democrat supporters from the New York State Nurses Association, SEIU Local 1199, the New York State NAACP and the Working Families Party led a protest last Saturday outside of the hospital and Koch’s apartment against the donation to New York Presbyterian.

The paper explains that such orchestrated idiocy is part of the Democrats’ “deliberate strategy for this year’s mid-term elections” to distract voters from the “massive failure” of ObamaCare. The paper also reminded its readers it is nothing new, noting that New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio stood by silently a few months ago when crackpot leftist Harry Belafonte likened the Koch brothers to the Ku Klux Klan.

The last line of the editorial puts the Democrats’ malicious efforts to malign the Kochs in perfect perspective. “Until now, we thought that what the Democrats and their allies loathed most was billionaire greed,” the paper stated. “Turns out what they hate even more is billionaire generosity.”

Make that some billionaire generosity. Sen. Harry Reid and his fellow Democrats are doubtlessly thrilled by leftist hedge fund manager and environmentalist Tom Steyer, who has pledged to spend as much as $100 million to pressure politicians to enact climate change laws. Steyer spent $11 million last year helping to elect Terry McAuliffe governor of Virginia. He spent additional millions on a Massachusetts Democratic congressional primary. And as the New York Times is forced to admit, Steyer is “seeking to build a war chest that would make his political organization, NextGen Climate Action, among the largest outside groups in the country, similar in scale to the conservative political network overseen by Charles and David Koch.”

Democratic pollster Geoff Garin remains immune to the hypocrisy. "The polling we’ve done shows very clearly that people think these unlimited expenditures don’t have anything to do with free speech and have everything to do with skewing what goes on with American government and American politics,“ said Garin in reference to the Kochs, further insisting that their efforts to "undermine environmental regulations is troubling to voters,” he said.

Not exactly. As Democrats convened for their pajama party on so-called climate change Monday night, conspicuously missing from the gathering were North Carolina's Kay Hagan, Alaska’s Mark Begich, Arkansas’ Mark Pryor and Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, all of whom are facing competitive races – and whose support of climate change legislation would likely be toxic. Related to that agenda is Democrats’ opposition to the Keystone Pipeline. In the Louisiana Senate race, a Hickman poll reveals that 67 percent of Louisiana voters surveyed favor construction of the Keystone project, and 45 percent of them would be less likely to vote for Landreiu if it isn’t approved. The other Senators mentioned above come from coal mining and oil producing states, and they approve of the pipeline.

They should. Two-thirds of the American public back its construction, an increase of six percentage points since 2012. Thus the notion that Americans are troubled by the Koch Brothers’ efforts to undermine the environmental regulations that have been the primary stumbling block to that construction, or the Democrats’ grim determination to enact environment-related measures that would send the price of electricity and gas through the roof, is absurd.

Nonetheless, Democrats will stop at nothing to personally destroy the Koch brothers and anyone else who poses a genuine threat to their political agenda. In a coordinated effort to keep Americans’ attention deflected from the healthcare bill, they have totally embraced radical leftist Saul Alinsky's Rule Number 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.”

The Democrats are out to hurt the Koch brothers because it’s easier than having to defend their own policies. Those would be the same Democrats who have vilified “mean-spiritedness,” posture as community “uniters,” and are awash in cash from the vast Leviathan of left-wing money. This year they’re running a hate campaign against two high-profile, but private American citizens. The Koch brothers may be at the front of the firing line, but rest assured the left has no compunction treating any conservative, big or small, the same.

Originally published at FrontPage Magazine.