CNN Debate: Romney Reveals Big Business Bias

Governor Mitt Romney, who has only recently been touting his support of the Second Amendment, is obviously not too experienced in the use of firearms. Am I the only one who noticed him pull that big fat gun out of his pocket and shoot himself in the foot last night?

He was, in fact, being asked a question about his record in Massachusetts re: taxes. Specifically, he was asked to defend his raising fees by hundreds of millions of dollars; to explain why those did not constitute tax increases. To defend his record, he gave as an example increasing the fee for McDonald’s to put a sign on the Massachusetts Turnpike to advertise their restaurant from $200 to $2,000.

Well, that’s just fine and dandy, if you’re a big multi-national corporation like McDonald’s. But what if you’re just a Mom & Pop family restaurant struggling to compete with places like McDonald’s? Forget it, Mom & Pop, says Governor Romney, you have to pay the 900% fee increase! Thus does Romney reveal that he cares about Wall Street, but not Main Street. And I’ll just bet that there were plenty of Moms and Pops out there in TVland who got his message, loud and clear.

Leave it to Mike Huckabee to define the divide between two different strains of economic conservatism with the Wall Street v. Main Street distinction. But since so many people—including Rush Limbaugh—seem not to get it, I’ll expound on it a bit more here. Because Mike Huckabee has the audacity to talk about the proverbial little guy and to criticize genuine examples of corporate greed, conservatives like Limbaugh conclude that Huckabee is a liberal and opposed to business; i.e., he can’t be a real economic conservative. They need to listen a little better to what Mike Huckabee has to say.

What liberal Democrats do is complain that the little guy is being crushed by the interests of big business. Hence, they justify greater taxation, regulation and litigation. And of course, that punishes all businesses, large and small, and drags the whole economy down.

On the other hand, Gov. Huckabee complains that small business is being crushed by excessive government taxation, regulation and litigation, and that this needs to be reversed (and the implementation of the Fair Tax would do it in one fell swoop). But big business can safeguard its profits against big government by outsourcing jobs and moving its capital offshore. This has the same ultimate effect of dragging down the national economy, and with it, ultimately, our national security. This process is, however, more insidious because, at least in the short run, profits—and therefore, tax revenues—keep rolling in, even as whole industries keep moving out overseas.

Mike Huckabee understands that most of America’s industry and most of its jobs are generated by small business—not big business. And just as importantly, he understands that what is good for small business is good for all business, big and small.

Unfortunately, Mitt Romney just doesn’t get it. He obviously believes that if we take care of big business, small business will benefit also. That ain’t necessarily so, as I have pointed out above.

Now how does this all play out in the political calculus of the current presidential election? Hmmm, it seems to me that there are plenty of billionaire industrialists (Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros come to mind) who are eager to throw in their fortunes with liberal Democrats like Hillary. Ever wonder why that is?

My point here is that if you want a President in the White House who will just take care of big business, you don’t need a fiscal conservative of Romney’s stripe or even a Republican. Hillary will do just fine.

But if you want a President in the White House who is a real conservative—fiscal and otherwise—you need to help elect Mike Huckabee!

(And as for all you guys who want to post, on this blog site, pleas for Mike to withdraw from the race because he’s hurting Mitt Romney’s chances, you can forget that. And if you’ve taken the time to read this post all the way through, now you also know one reason why.)