Here’s more evidence that the GOP is alienating some of their strongest traditional allies. As Greg Sargent muses, one wonders how much longer business leaders will abide the monster they created with the Tea Party. No doubt, individuals are losing patience and rethinking their political calculus. But organizations are finding that there is no point in lobbying a party that refuses to compromise or legislate. And if there is no point in lobbying them, then there isn’t much point in funding them, either.
The assumption among most political analysts is that the Romney vote is some kind of floor for the Republicans. But business-minded Republicans are going to start leaving the party in frustration. I can tell this because their lobbyists are already frustrated beyond belief.
Did you see Yglesias’s Don’t Believe the Hype, the Chamber of Commerce Is Thrilled With the GOP?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/08/19/chamber_of_commerce_hearts_republicans.html
Not until you directed me to it.
Having read it, I don’t think Yglesias and I are talking about quite the same thing. He’s talking about the Chamber of Commerce as an institution and ascribing emotions to it (they’re happy!!). I’m talking about flesh and blood business leaders. These are the sort of folks who fund the Chamber of Commerce and have set up its rules and policies, or at least are pleased with its rules and policies.
It’s a subtle distinction, but the bottom line is that, some ideologues aside, the reason people support the Chamber of Commerce is because they have certain interests that the want to protect or advance, and the reason the Chamber is so in bed with the Republican Party is because the Republican Party has done their bidding quite obediently.
Now, these leaders are regretting the demise of Blue Dog Democrats. They have every incentive to revive them.
They took out the Blue Dogs, replaced them with Teahadists, and broke the government.
So, it isn’t so much that they are going to suddenly want the Democrats to control things, but they do want the immigration system fixed and the transportation and agricultural spigots turned back on. They don’t want any more of this Russian Roulette with the debt ceiling. And there probably going to members who start supporting conservadems again.
Yglesias doesn’t even tackle the real thing that is driving this change.
If you are lobbyist for a group that wants a small change in the Affordable Care Act, you can’t get anywhere with the Republicans.
So, you can keep funding ideologues or you can start funding pro-business Democrats, at least in select cases.
Or, at least, you can start voting for them.
Not when it empowers condescending liberals like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, they don’t.
You’re acting like the national Democratic leadership is all warm smiles and go-along-to-get-along-ism. But instead, big business is really trapped between a rock and a hard place.
Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
So now the actual business owners realize the Chamber isn’t exactly in synch with their membership? And why would people elect Blue Dogs? They are just Republicans who don’t want the stench attached to them.
This will be interesting. Usually we think of business leaders as being at least somewhat intelligent and rational. And usually they are … in my experience their most common flaw is the inability to separate what benefits them personally from what benefits their business.
But add politics to the mix and the craziness is revealed for all to see. I know a very, very, very smart finance guy who can work through any accounting situation in a given business and get to the bottom of it – who is hopeless when it comes to tax policy and macroeconomics. His pure hatred of Democrats completely blinds him.
And I do wonder if this isn’t just a natural reaction to having a lot of money – you fall into the money-holder groupthink. I know of a friend – very long time now – who always voted Democratic along with his schoolteacher wife every year until 2012, when he chose Romney because he was afraid the US was “becoming like Greece”. His wife still voted for Obama. He understands macro to a reasonable degree and he’s definitely not a wingnut – he’s multilingual, very international, and loves new cultures. BUT … in the past 3 years he’s also seen a massive income increase as part of a C-level promotion.
So, based on my personal experiences I find it hard to believe the business community would shift over and start supporting the Democrats. In fact, quite a few will tell you they did that in 2008 and feel betrayed now (imagine how they’d feel if any of them had been actually prosecuted for their financial crimes).
I think more likely the business community … who started heavily infesting in the evangelical propagandists in the late 1990s … will cut off the wingnut welfare to the teanuts and shift it somewhere else.
So, based on my personal experiences I find it hard to believe the business community would shift over and start supporting the Democrats.
What do you think the DLC/New Dems/Blue Dogs are?
A half-hearted attempt.
The infiltrators? Like Tony Blair?
Honestly, I never have understood why most of these Lieberdems joined the Democratic Party in the first place. Except for the Southerners who grew up when being white in the south meant being Democratic (and there aren’t many of those left) all the rest would have been more comfortable in the GOP of the 1980s and early 1990s – the GOP of Jeffords and Collins and Ford and Weicker (who Lieberman upended).
In any event, the business community is not a monolith, there are those who support the Democrats and even those who do so not as part of a “give money to both parties” political plan – but they are a small minority. I just don’t see that minority getting any bigger, no matter how crazy the GOP becomes.
When ALEC starts funding Democrats, let me know.
The split between ALEC and the Chamber of Commerce is kinda interesting, isn’t it?
From The Prospect 2001:
Plenty of Koch money has made its way into Democratic coffers in the past dozen years. Why pretend otherwise?
As I’ve been saying, the purpose of the DLC was to destroy the Democratic Party from within .. why else would the Koch Brothers give money to it? It’s part of the reason why I’d never vote for Clinton in the primary. Both Bill and Hillary were DLC.
I believe the definitive article on the DLC was written in Slate: The Rainbow’s Gravity. The money quote:
And what percent of the white male vote has the party gotten since? Has it really gotten better?
Good point but it didn’t stop Bill and Hillary from targeting exactly this cohort as a last ditch attempt to derail Obama in early summer 2008; it seemed to align with their previous doctrine and overall strategy.
Sure because in places like Kentucky there are still way more registered Democrats. Kind of interesting that a lot of Democrats would vote in the primary yet vote for Aqua Buddha or Yertle the Turtle.