The conservative industrialists continue to play a totemic role in leftist demonology, but they don't have to like it.

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At this point, the status of the Koch brothers as figures of cartoonish conservative evil in the liberal imagination is well cemented. They've become shorthand, to those on the left, for the craven, heartless greed of the unfettered capitalistic impulse -- stock figures in Democratic efforts to rile up the base. But this is not how the Kochs see themselves, it turns out. And so Charles and David Koch continue to wage a battle, probably fruitless, to fight what they see as their unfair demonization.

The idea of the Kochs as the ultimate shadowy bankrollers of the right wing has not lost its power, judging by the frequency with which it continues to appear. This week, for example, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent supporters a fundraising email urging them to open their wallets to combat "Romney, Rove and the Koch Brothers," a reference to anti-Obama ads being run by the Rove-advised super PAC American Crossroads and the Koch-linked American Energy Alliance. And the Obama campaign, in a press release, blasted a new report saying health-care reform would increase the deficit by tying it to the Kochs: "TODAY'S 'REPORT' BOUGHT AND PAID FOR BY THE OIL BILLIONAIRE KOCH BROTHERS," said the headline about the study by the Mercatus Institute, which was launched with a grant from the Kochs over a decade ago. "The Koch brothers and their allied organizations first spent millions of dollars attacking the President in an attempt to maintain taxpayer subsidies for oil and gas companies that are making record profits and boosting their own bottom line," Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt said in the press release. "Now, they have bought and paid for a false, partisan report."