Redefining capitalism
by David Atkins
Newt Gingrich isn't the only Republican hopeful trying to bring down Mitt Romney by way of attacking the "free" market. Rick Perry got into it with Sean Hannity yesterday as well:
Perry said, “There is a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism.” He went on to clarify, “The truth is the truth, Sean, and there’s no use in us trying to shy away from it. If we think for a minute that Barack Obama’s not going to attack this and talk about this, we might as well get it out in the open and discuss it right now and find out is this the type of conservative that we want representing us at the top of the ticket.”
Hannity challenged Perry, saying “I just think as a conservative to say that those people that are willing to invest their money for companies that have either been mismanaged, or they are headed for bankruptcy, and they come in and try to get them profitable again. To say they’re vultures and they’re unethical, I mean that’s about as severe a charge as you can make.”
Perry responded, “The fact is the folks in Gaffney, South Carolina and Georgetown, South Carolina agree with that, and I happen to think that if they were going to be real venture capitalists, they would come in and help clean up those companies, save those jobs, rather than coming in and picking their bones clean, which I think is exactly what they did.”
Perry is right: Romney is going to be destroyed on this issue in a general election where the Objectivist cult only comprises about a quarter of the nation's voters.
The Sean Hannitys of the world want to ram Objectivism down America's throat and force them to like it.
But while the Obama campaign won't frame it in these terms, modern capitalism itself will be on trial in this campaign. Many Republicans less hubristic and shortsighted than Hannity understand that, and want to pretend that vulture capitalism isn't real capitalism (though it very much is, especially in a financialized, asset-based economy.) But it's too late for that now. Romney is going to be their standard-bearer, exposing the ugliness of Republican economics for what it really is.
And while progressives know that President Obama is light years away from being a socialist, the right-wing media empire will attempt to portray him as such, framing the 2012 election as a choice between nasty European Socialism and good old-fashioned American Free Market Capitalism. Obama vs. Romney is nothing of the sort, of course, but the truth of the matter is irrelevant to the rhetoric of the debate set by the right-wing and its enablers in the traditional media.
For a great many voters who don't know better, President Obama will represent "Socialism", while Mitt Romney will represent "Capitalism." So-called Socialism is going to win the day fairly handily in November 2012, and the wingers will have none but themselves to blame for it. Gingrich and Perry can whine belatedly all they want, but they made their bed and now they get to lie in it.
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