Bill White and the Sweetheart Hurricane, Michael Quinn Sullivan’s post about how White engaged in crony capitalism to profit from a natural disaster, reminds us of the interplay in American politics between free market capitalism, crony capitalism, and socialism.
Conservatives are free marketeers. The free market holds everyone, including corporations, accountable. If it didn’t, corporations wouldn’t go to governments to buy favors, a practice called both “crony capitalism” and “corporate socialism”. They wouldn’t need favors. (This alone disproves the leftist lie that corporation size alone stifles competition. After all, the favors they pay for are pretty expensive.)
Moderates and liberals are crony capitalists, or if you like, corporate socialists. Moderates like it as a destination, liberals like is as a means to full socialism. Crony capitalism is when government partners up with corporations to give them unfair competitive advantages in exchange for campaign money. Liberals do this more than moderates, including moderate Republicans, but they all do it.
Liberals capitalize on the lie moderate Republicans tell, namely that they’re free marketeers. Liberals can then point to crony capitalism and call it free market capitalism (moderate Republicans having set the table for this criticism) smearing it in their push for out and out socialism. They tell us “government must regulate” as if politicians and bureaucrats are inherently more trustworthy than businessmen.
This is precisely why moderates damage the Republican party so badly. They engage in crony capitalism while touting free markets. Liberals point to this corruption (corruption they engage in more, but they don’t defend it as free market capitalism) and blame free markets in order to regulate and take over the private sector.
Then, seeing the bad results, conservative America, the biggest voter demographic on the block, becomes dispirited because they think either a)the GOP is corrupt or b) free markets don’t work like they’re supposed to.
The truth is free markets work beautifully and the GOP needs to be cleansed of moderate officials.
Most people who agitate for a “big tent” GOP think the size of the tent has to do with allowing both conservative and moderate ideology. This is wrong. The party gets its most votes when it’s unapologetically conservative as Reagan and the Contract with America proved.
When GOP is painted as crony-capitalist-moderate voters feel resigned that someone will be getting unfair advantages from the government. That being the case, it might as well be the little guy and not the big guy. Then we end up with the Obama Administration.
That Republicans are for the big guy and Democrats are for the little guy is a myth the left still gets away with. Democrats are in bed with the big business more than anyone, but the GOP will never get that message to stick as long as their playing defense because of all of the criticism moderates open the party up to.
