What the owners of the Tea Party really want.

If you walk through the heart of Times Square today and look up at the 520 sq. ft. CBS superscreen on 42nd St., you’re going to be introduced to the largest oil company you’ve never heard of: Koch Industries.

Like a BP oil gusher, foreign money is allegedly flowing into the midterm elections. Heavyweight interests with the muscle to influence legislation to suit their agenda, like the Chamber of Commerce, are at the center of this foreign money gusher putting Republicans over the top in many of the elections where Democratic incumbents are now endangered. Another corporate money gusher, unsurprisingly, is coming as a result of Karl Rove’s and the Koch Brothers’ attempts to influence the outcome of the election.

If you think the Tea Party represents real people who are mad as hell about real issues, you might want to know that it just had its first rally under the Beverly Hills sign over the weekend.

I found out about the rally when I showed up for a 10 o’clock news debate and singer Pat Boone was on the other side dressed in his “Beverly Hills Tea Party” sweater. If you want to know what the Tea Party’s really about, listen to Boone croon about the “free market” and “deregulation” like it’s a new idea.

There’s a name that’s becoming as ubiquitous in dirty oil politics as Coke cans are in greasy spoons. And it’s pronounced like the soft drink, but spelled Koch. Koch-heads now on the radar include Carly Fiorina, the Tea Party and Proposition 23.

When Californians angry about oil companies’ attempt to repeal the state’s greenhouse gas emission cap went to confront the oil refiner behind Prop 23′s power play, they found the Tea Party in their way.

I met briefly with Democratic Party U.S. Senate candidate Scott McAdams last Thursday, in Anchorage. Today, he’ll be out in the Mat-Su Valley, the heart of the Darth Vaderesque Koch Brothers’ astroturf organization, known as the Tea Party Express. Out here, the day before our late September primary election, dozens of 3/4-ton diesel pickup trucks and Humvees raced around with 4′ X 8′ Jim Miller signs on top. Two of them sported large Confederate flags. One sported a huge Israeli flag, next to a much smaller American one.

The numbers started to go Sen. Murkowski’s way this morning in the counting of absentee and questioned ballots in Alaska, of last week’s GOP primary for her U.S. Senate seat. Trailing Tea Bag Express favorite, Joe Miller by less than 2,000 votes, she didn’t close the gap enough by late afternoon today to make the numbers add up. Late in the afternoon Murkowski conceded.

Those who read my posts (and there are a lot more of you than I ever thought there would be) know that I am not really a fan of divisive politics. This comes from the teachings of my Mom, who spent her political career reaching out to Republicans to get things done in Washtenaw County. Her argument was always that while you might hammer your opponents in today’s fight, you’re probably going to need them to get tomorrows work done. It is generally good advice, but it is predicated on the premise that your opponents want to get things done and really are working for the best solution for everyone.

Sadly Mom’s good advice can not be used right now. There has been too big a shift in power in the nation for us to look at the Republicans as any kind of honest partner in anything. The efforts of the folks like the ultra-wealthy Koch brothers have shifted our discourse so far to the right that things which would have had politicians thinking about spending more time with their families in the past can be said with a straight face and taken as serious.