Money Can't Buy You Love

It's a protection racket and sometimes you have to buy it from multiple purveyors, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

Google Inc. employees have been a top source of campaign cash for President Barack Obama. A former chief executive campaigned for the president. Several company executives went to work in his administration.

Behind the scenes, though, the company has been working hard to change its profile as an ally of the Democratic Party, courting Republicans and building alliances with conservatives at a time when regulators and Congress are considering issues affecting its business interests.

Google has hired a string of Republican operatives as part of an effort to build relationships with GOP lawmakers and has evened out the campaign donations from its political-action committee, which had skewed in favor of Democratic candidates.

Republicans like nice things, too, and there's no point in pretending that some of them aren't just as vindictive as the Democrats that Google loved first. So you gotta open the ol' wallet sometimes.

Of course, some of the Google's original beneficiaries have noticed and don't like this, don't like it one bit:

The rightward turn has some liberal-leaning groups complaining that the company has compromised its principles. In funding conservative causes, "Google is right up there with the Koch Brothers," said John Simpson, a frequent critic of the company and director of the privacy project at Consumer Watchdog, a progressive public-interest group. "The galling thing is they hold themselves out to be something different."

Just like the Koch Brothers -- wow, that's quite an accusation there. Everyone knows the Koch Brothers are the focus of evil in the modern world these days, replacing the Soviet Union. By the way, Simpson could probably use a couple of shekels himself.

Am I being cynical about this? Not particularly, I think. And Google certainly has identified the right sorts of Republicans to subsidize:

To head up its Washington office, Google in 2012 hired former Republican congresswoman Susan Molinari. Niki Christoff, a veteran of Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, was moved to Washington last year to head up Google's communications in the capital.

Before that, Google hired Pablo Chavez, a former general counsel for Mr. McCain, who recently left for LinkedIn; Seth Webb, a former staffer for the Republican Speaker of the House; and Jill Hazelbaker, who also worked for a string of Republican candidates.

No word on whether they stopped in St. Louis along the way to pick up some Ralston-Purina RINO Chow.