Oh, those libertarians! Always shilling for Big
Business! Except, um, when libertarian-leaning Republicans are
actually in power, in which case the Chamber of Commerce agitates
to replace them with more traditional GOP types. Cato Executive
Vice President David Boaz rounds up several examples in this
helpful Daily Beast
column:
Why, for instance, did big companies spend so much money
to defeat
a Republican Georgia legislator last month? Apparently Rep.
Charles Gregory was just too libertarian for the Georgia Chamber of
Commerce and the companies like Coca Cola, Delta Airlines, Georgia
Power, and AT&T, who suddenly set up a the “Georgia Coalition
for Job Growth” to oppose him and other tea party legislators. It’s
not the only example this primary season.In Kentucky, business leaders lobbied
hard though unsuccessfully to persuade Steve Stevens, head
of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, to run against Rep.
Thomas Massie. Massie, a businessman himself, is a strong fiscal
conservative, but some local business leaders don’t like what they
see as his stand-off approach.A Washington business consultant has moved to northern
California to challenge anti-earmarks Rep. Tom McClintock, because
he “thinks representatives should deliver for folks back
home,” in
the words of a local reporter. […]In Michigan business
leaders are funding financial consultant Brian Ellis’s primary
challenge to Rep. Justin Amash. […]In an interview
with the Weekly Standard, Ellis strikingly
dismissed Amash’s principled, constitutional stand: “He’s got his
explanations for why he’s voted, but I don’t really care. I’m a
businessman, I look at the bottom line. If something is
unconstitutional, we have a court system that looks at that.”
Plenty more at the link. Brian Doherty wrote yesterday about
the challenges of
making the Republican Party more libertarian.
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