Tag: Dave Brat

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture

Big Business vs. Big Liberty

“Incumbents Fear Cantor’s Loss Will Fill Tea Party’s Sails” is the headline.

Before a few days ago, GOP establishmentarians felt that they had finally quelled the Tea Party notion that Republicans should be more than 2 to 4 percent different from Democrats on whether the country should suffer a socialist health care industry, endless tsunamis of red ink, etc.

Coca-ColaCertain big businesses also hate Tea-​Party-​style boat-​rocking. In his article “Big Business Vs. Libertarians in the GOP,” David Boaz observes that candidates who plausibly oppose crony capitalism are drawing opposition from firms like Coca Cola, Delta, Georgia Power, and AT&T. These and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce created a “Georgia Coalition for Job Growth” to defeat Republican Charles Gregory and other candidates who are “just too libertarian” for them.

What do these anti-​liberty businesses — in Georgia, Kentucky, California and elsewhere — fear? The lower taxes that real-​deal Tea Party candidates support?

No.

And it isn’t “gay marriage or foreign policy that seems to annoy big and politically connected businesses,” writes Boaz. Who they oppose are representatives who refuse to “bring home the bacon,” who “actually take seriously the limited government ideas that most Republicans only pay lip service to.”

Don’t be shocked to witness big businesses working against limited government, welcoming regulation and subsidy as a way of life.

Why? Because the “mixed economy” approach (whether mercantilist, “progressive,” fascist, what-​have-​you) allows them to rig the system in their favor, usually by discouraging competition.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
political challengers

Brat Beats Cantor

Yesterday, House Majority Eric Cantor (R‑Va.) received a solid thumping by Tea Party-​supported Dave Brat in Virginia’s Republican Party primary.

That bounce in my step today? Not schadenfreude.

Americans have always loved the underdog, and certainly Brat qualified as one: Cantor was expected to crush his underfunded challenger. Slate’s Dave Weigel reported that the Cantor campaign “spent nearly $1 million in the final weeks, while Brat struggled to spend six figures.”Dave Brat and Eric Cantor

Brat, a Randolph Macon College economics professor, says he’s “a free-​market guy,” and proudly admits, “I do want to scale down Washington, DC.” He also signed the U.S. Term Limits pledge and dubbed himself “Cantor’s term-limit.”

By a dozen percentage points, no less.

Brat hammered Cantor on the immigration issue — on which I side with neither Brat nor Cantor — but the defeat of this major congressional leader was about far more than that single issue. It was about leadership and trust … or the lack thereof.

Our so-​called leaders aren’t leading.

And the Republican grassroots refuse to blindly follow.

Well-​known conservative activist Brent Bozell, head of ForAmerica, a group that attacked Cantor, called the upset “an apocalyptic moment for the GOP establishment,” adding, “The grassroots is in revolt and marching.”

Several TV talking heads spoke about the fear the Republican congressional leadership has of its own party’s rank-​and-​file. Great! I hope Republicans will keep GOP politicians scared. And Democrats will do the same with theirs. And Libertarians and Greens will help stir the caldron.

This is the biggest upset since those crazy term limits folks took out House Speaker Tom Foley back in 1994.

And I feel fine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.