News Corp, a massive media conglomerate owned by aging Australian vulgarian Rupert Murdoch, donated $1 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby.
While most of Murdoch's news outlets range, ideologically, from corporate conservative to frothing populist right-wing, Murdoch traditionally throws his money at both parties, in a largely successful attempt to shield himself from regulation no matter who's in power. But News Corp has already made headlines this year for giving $1 million to the Republican Governors Association. This might represent the growing influence in News Corp of Fox News chairman and former Republican media consultant Roger Ailes, who is supposedly engaged in a turf war with the more liberal members of the Murdoch family looking to control the company. Ailes is a movement conservative, and uninterested in the traditinoal Murdoch game of supporting winners regardless of party.
So News Corp is now, officially, trying to get as many Republicans elected as possible. Which, from a business standpoint, doesn't make a huge amount of sense; while the Democrats may slightly raise Murdoch's personal income taxes, the party as a whole is a business-friendly as can be, and has traditionally bent over backward to accommodate media conglomerates. So this is ideological, and not purely profit-driven.
The Chamber of Commerce nearly exclusively supports Republicans, despite that party's unwillingness to do anything to prevent massive financial crises and their desire to gut the social safety net that allows Americans to actually buy the products and use the services of the companies that make up the Chamber's membership. (The growing influence of the business lobby has aided the growing income inequality that will eventually tear our nice country apart.)
The Chamber is throwing more money at this election than the RNC and the DNC combined. Thanks to our Supreme Court, corporations can use the Chamber to lobby without attaching their names to the cause.
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