The anti-free-enterprise president

Reince Priebus

Politico -  Chairman Reince Priebus will join News New Mexico Thursday morning 8am Mountain time. President Barack Obama declared Tuesday, “This is what this campaign is going to be about.” He was not talking about jobs. He was not talking about the economy—not even about the budget deficit. He was referring to divisive, disingenuous character attacks against presumed GOP nominee Mitt Romney and a rhetorical assault on job creators. How far we’ve come from what Obama said in 2008 that his administration would be about. Yet these attacks on free enterprise reveal more than just the end of “hope and change.” They reveal a president unacquainted with the free market — and therefore hostile to it. 

The president’s tactics are so extreme that some in his own party are recoiling in disgust. Until now, it was unthinkable that the president would base his campaign on undermining the nation’s confidence in our free market system. Maybe, though, it should not surprise us. His policies have been an affront to the private sector — constraining job creation and economic growth. His words are now catching up with his actions. From “Obamacare” to excessive regulation, from anti-growth tax policy to stimulus handouts, the Obama administration has left the free market battered and bruised. Its misguided attempts at top-down job creation have not worked. In many cases, they have backfired. In Obama’s view, government exists to use taxpayer money, without our permission, to prop up failing companies — often to benefit of his campaign donors. Such is the story of Solyndra, which gobbled up over a half-billion dollars of thoughtlessly allocated stimulus funds, only to go bankrupt and lay off more than a thousand employees. Obama, standing at the solar energy company’s California headquarters two years ago, praised businesses like Solyndra as the “true engine of economic growth.” That’s the problem. Read More News New Mexico

The anti-free-enterprise president