Are the Koch Brothers the Grand Puppetmasters?

We're being told these days that the Koch Brothers, conservative businessmen and financiers, are the root of all evil in the world.  They're the latest target of the Saul Alinsky attempt to find someone who can be demonized and blamed for everything the left doesn't like.

What's surprising to me about all this is that I've been a member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy for many, many years and had never heard of the Koch Brothers.  It wasn't until a collection of loonies showed up to protest their event in Rancho Mirage in January that I first heard their name.  Clearly, if they're calling the shots in the conservative movement they've got some work to do on their communication skills.

Daily Caller tells us a little more about the Koch Brothers:

Understanding the Kochs: A primer for liberals, idiots, others -- "The Kochs do not cause people to behave in a certain way or believe in a certain thing," writes James Otteson of the Fund for American Studies. "Rather, they look for people who are already behaving and believing in ways that they agree with, and they support them." Otteson himself receives funding from the Koch brothers, but he doesn't "do their bidding," a claim liberals have directed at anyone who receives support from the Koch Foundation, up to and including, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Writes Otteson: "I give talks, I lead discussions, and I teach classes all sponsored by TFAS, and thus in part by the Koch Foundation, but I do not ask permission from the Koch Foundation to teach what I want to teach; I do not ask them to review my talks; they give me no advice about what books or articles or historical figures to discuss; and they do not ask to vet my views on any philosophical, economic, or policy-related issue. Instead, I have made proposals to them about projects I wanted to work on for which I asked support, and in some cases they have agreed to support me." In other cases, they haven't/don't. That's simple enough for even a liberal to understand. 

Liberals aren't interested in understanding, they're interested in demagoguing. The Koch Brothers are a convenient target because they're not particularly well known by most of the public. Consequently, it's easy to paint them as all kinds of evil because people don't know anything else about them.