Democrats attack Wall Street while prominent Democrats rake in case from the financial sector, their allies in the media continue to trash the GOP as the party of big business, even as the big-government policies more readily favored by Democrats (and all too frequently by all too many Republicans) do seem to help big businesses (and big banks) maintain their size and increase their market share. They have crafted this narrative of a big business/big bank/Republican axis.
And Katrina vanden Heuvel, “editor of the liberal Nation magazine,” has become the latest pundit on the left to repeat this notion. After she accused Missouri Republican Roy Blunt of standing “with the insurance and drug companies against health-care reform“, the Washington Examiner‘s Timothy P. Carney set the record straight and took his leftist counterpart to task:
It’s a knee-jerk reaction for many liberals — they hate industry and they love government, and so they just assume that big business is against big government. But they’re wrong. Sometimes, they’re very wrong.
It seems this liberal “narrative,” like the notion of “racist” Tea Parties (as if racism must needs be behind every popular movement on the right) is based on prejudice rather than evidence.
Just contrast the two writers. Ms. vanden Heuvel fails to marshal any facts to buttress her accusation about those who stood with Mr. Blunt (not, I might add, against health care reform per se, but against the Democrats’ massive health care overhaul.) Furthermore, she provides no evidence whatsoever to support her contention that Republicans “have served as the guardians of entrenched corporate interests, as opposed to the common good.” I wonder if she has even the faintest understanding of the ideas undergirding Republican opposition to the bill what she deems reform.
That she would suggest they aren’t interested in the “common good” betrays her real prejudices against her ideological adversaries.
Carney, on the other hand, provides abundant links to show just how the drug lobby did double time to move the passage of Obamacare.
UPDATE:Just caught this on Yahoo!: “Watchdog: Small banks struggling despite bailouts“:
To the list of economic woes squeezing small banks, add another one: government bailouts.
The Treasury Department’s bailout program was designed with Wall Street megabanks in mind, according to a new report from a congressional watchdog. The “one-size-fits-all” program may actually be hurting small banks that are struggling to repay the money or even deliver quarterly dividend payments, the report says.
Once again, big government programs hurt small enterprises. So, Ms. vanden Heuvel notwithstanding, conservative policies opposing such bailouts actually help small financial institutions more than the big ones.
And ignores much evidence, both historical and recent, that Democrats “have served as the guardians of entrenched corporate interests, as opposed to the common good.”