The Republicans in the House and Senate who voted against the Big Three bailout have been accused of putting adherence to a free market economy ahead of “what good for America,” if only that were true:
“That criticism pays Republicans a compliment they don’t deserve,” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “The Republican opposition to the auto bailout was not a matter of principle, but of pragmatic nit-picking.
“A principled opposition to the auto bailout would have denounced as immoral any attempt to use taxpayer money to prop up failing companies. It would have insisted that such attempts at central planning are destructive and un-American. It would have said that the government’s proper function is not to engineer the economy, but to protect individual rights and otherwise leave the economy free. That is not what the Republicans claimed.
“In his floor statement opposing the bill, leading Republican senator Mitch McConnell’s ‘stinging’ criticism consisted of finding that the bill ‘does not’ lay out ‘an effective strategy for securing the long-term viability of these companies,’ that it did not give the proposed ‘Car Czar’ enough power, and–the ultimate deal-killer for Republicans–the bill would have adjusted auto worker wage rates at ‘too slow’ a pace.
“The tragic fact is that Republicans do not regard central planning as objectionable–they merely disagree with the Democrats’ central plan.”
It’s completely correct, of course, although I’m not sure that I’d call it a “tragic fact.”
The Republican Party has pretty much just paid lip service to free market and limited government ideas over the past eight years, and they’re leaving behind the record to show for it, too. Their failure adhere to those principles this time around isn’t tragic, it’s just business as usual.
H/T: Instapundit
