Just a few short weeks ago, the Kochs and the Republican party were in what one Republican operative said was an "all-out war" over who would control the party going forward. The Kochs have been systematically putting a ground force in place across the nation to build their own extremely sophisticated database, one that they would allow Republican candidates to use ( excepting Trump ). This alarmed the RNC because all that valuable information was not being held by them. That and the whole thing about how "it's very dangerous and wrong to allow a group of very strong, well-financed individuals who have no accountability to anyone to have control over who gets access to the data when, why and how," in the words of Katie Walsh, the RNC's chief of staff.

But now it looks like the RNC has given up the fight.



Since then, the rhetoric has ratcheted down. Last week, i360 [the Koch data arm] and Data Trust [the RNC group] signed a deal to share data for the 2016 cycle. "I do think there's a value to making sure we're all working together to ensure that we’re doing things efficiently and effectively. We appreciate everything the Kochs are doing, and it's a huge help," Walsh told The Washington Post. "But at the end of the day, our focus is making sure that the voter file and the field staff are ready for the nominee to come in." […] But Freedom Partners is focused on expanding its own reach, and one of the top priorities is to improve data analytics and field tactics. This cycle, the network plans to continue a series of experiments it began in 2014 in which it tested how different combinations of voter-outreach methods—door-knocking, phone calls and television ads—swayed voters.

That's the kind of long-term work that the national parties do. And this will be long term, as Marc Short, president of Freedom Partners, told the Washington Post. They intend to mirror what President Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns did in organizing, but make it permanent, and they intend to hang on to it for the duration. So congratulations, RNC, you've now officially been acquired by the Koch conglomerate.