RON DESANTIS SEPARATES HIMSELF FROM LEGACY GOP WITH ATTACK ON “CORPORATISM:”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has come out swinging since the Republican wipeout in the midterm elections. I hope this is because he’s laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential bid, since he is one of the few national Republicans in tune with heartland Americans. Among the topics he is discussing is the problem of “corporatism,” and how the back-scratching, crony capitalism that exists between government and many corporations repels conservative voters, while also fueling the popularity of socialism among non-conservatives.

Here are some quotes from Gov. DeSantis, as documented in a NY Post article titled “DeSantis says ‘corporatist Republicans’ drive young voters toward socialism after GOP’s midterm disaster”:

“Young people have a very positive view of socialism compared to capitalism. The question is, why is that?”

“Some of it is the education in our universities. But I think a big part of that is, what they’re comparing is not free enterprise versus socialism. What they’re comparing is how government gets involved in business, and you have crony capitalism.”

“The best kind of indirect supporters of socialism are some of these corporatist Republicans who propagate these crony policies.”

“If it’s cronyism versus socialism, there’s going to be enough people who are going to choose socialism.”

Gov. DeSantis’ attack on corporatism is welcome and politically necessary.

I have been pounding on the issue of crony capitalism and corporate misbehavior for years, not because I’m anti-business, but because I’m anti-socialism. Like the great Malcolm Forbes (who embraced the nickname “The Capitalist Tool”, I am trying to shame companies that give capitalism a bad name, because they actually empower the enemies of economic freedom.

Flashback to 2009: Obama and the Reawakening of Corporatism.

Today, some American conservatives will argue that we never put aside the corporatism of the U.S. during the New Deal. They can point to any number of initiatives, from Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society to Richard Nixon’s wage and price controls, as evidence of continued drift. Progressives, by contrast, will argue that America has been governed over that same time by a corporatist regime of big business conspiring with government against the middle and lower classes so that only the rich benefit.

The facts belie both versions. If corporations have been running our economy for their own purposes, or in tandem with big government, they haven’t been doing an awfully good job of protecting their interests, considering how quickly U.S. firms rise and fall and how the Fortune 500 turns over. And if only the rich are getting richer someone needs to tell Bill Gates, a kid from a middle class background with no college degree, or Warren Buffett, who grew up working in his grandfather’s grocery store, that they need to return the billions they’ve somehow acquired to the Rockefellers, the Astors, the Vanderbilts and other once-rich families whose fortunes have long been in decline.

Still, great economic dislocations bring out the corporatist, which is why we now have a government board overseeing General Motors, and the Treasury Department has issued the first car warranty program in its history. It’s why some banks were pressured to accept bailout money they didn’t need and have been pressured not to return it to get out from under federal micromanagement. And it’s why the federal stimulus package contains such chestnuts as money to build out our broadband infrastructure, which comes with all sorts of strings attached by the Federal Communications Commission, because we somehow can’t rely on our phone, cable or internet companies to provide customers with the bandwidth they demand in networks that will suit our economy.

How did the Obama-era crony corporatism work out? President Obama’s Taxpayer-Backed Green Energy Failures.