U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Which Party is The Corporations’ Favorite?

Earlier this month, the United States Chamber of Commerce handed out its annual "Spirit of Enterprise" awards to those members of Congress who voted with the Chamber 70 percent of the time on its most important legislative initiatives of 2008. The only four Republican senators who did not receive the award were Jon Kyl, Jeff Sessions, Jim Inhofe and me - four of the most conservative members of the Senate…What were the conservative offenses? We opposed the failed bailouts and stimulus. Which explains why many liberal Democrats scored higher, including Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton….DEMINT: GOP should end affair with corporate elites, Senator Jim Demint (R-SC), 4/29/09

Accusing others of having your own faults is a common human failing. We all know at least one office gossip who accuses his or her colleagues of doing precisely what he or she is doing, whether undermining an associate, trading secrets with the competition, or lying about performance. As Senator DeMint makes vividly clear in an article you should spend a few minutes to read, Republicans have borne the popular accusations that they’re in bed with corporations since the Depression of the 1930s. Look more closely at who sent money to the DNC and the Obama campaign in 2008. It wasn’t just George Soros, although the eccentric financier is a good model. As much money as unions gave the DNC and Obama’s campaign, Fortune 500 companies gave more. Why is that?

The Left is openly contemptuous of the small entrepreneur: the Cuban refugee who rose to own a plumbing business in Miami; the Vietnamese who went from escape on a leaky boat to running a successful used car business in San Diego; the average guy from Dubuque who had the gumption, the will, and the strength to build a small chain of hardware stores. The Left loves organizations that mirror its own perceptions of how things should be – elites controlling the lives of many. Corporate life is all about that. Anyone who has worked in a corporation – GM is actually a very good example – knows that the corporation is happy to employ an awful lot of people who probably couldn’t run a plumbing business, a used car lot, or a hardware store. What they are good at is obeying the hierarchy, doing their jobs, and not causing trouble. This is the very picture of the socialist enterprise. It has a mission statement that promises the greatest good for the greatest number, but internally it’s all about people who can’t, or won’t, manage their own affairs, so they relinquish their autonomy to an elite on the 9th, or the 75th, floor. This is not all bad. A vast proportion of the economic activity of the world depends on this kind of organization, and it is not unfair to say that a substantial majority of working people probably have neither the interest nor the inclination to run a business. Trouble is, of course, that neither corporations nor the Leftist enterprise tolerate competition. And you’ll notice this.

The Obama administration is not bailing out plumbing businesses, used car lots, or hardware stores. It’s bailing out miserably managed, massive corporations like AIG, GM, and Chrysler, companies a rational market would have dismissed out of hand, and companies the Left recognizes as being just like the administration that’s sending the bailout checks: intolerant of debate; ignorant of contingencies; and ready to crush all competition.

Luther