Republicans have thrown all sorts of charges at Barack Obama since he entered the national scene, calling him a socialist and a radical, saying he’s anti-business, and even a food-stamp president. As the 2012 general election begins, Republican nominee Mitt Romney and Obama’s other opponents are taking a different line of attack: tagging Obama with charges of cronyism and corporate welfare while pointing out his coziness with lobbyists.
This is one of the truest and potentially damaging attacks the GOP has ever leveled against Obama. But do Republicans have any credibility to make the charge, or the guts to take the critique to its logical conclusion?
“More than 16 billion dollars have gone to companies like Solyndra that are linked to big Obama and Democrat donors,” intones a Romney campaign ad released this week. “The inspector general said contracts were steered to ‘friends and family.’ Obama is giving taxpayer money to big donors. And then watching them lose it. Good for them. Bad for us.”
At the same time, the Republican super-PAC led by Bush consigliere Karl Rove invoked Solyndra and sounded a populist note in an ad accusing Obama of “playing Wall Street games with our money.”
The pro-Romney American Future Fund has run ads whacking Obama for his ties to Wall Street, including Obama super-bundler and failed financier Jon Corzine. “Guess who gave $42 million to Obama’s last campaign for president,” the ad says, “Wall Street bankers and financial insiders, more than any other candidate in history. But Obama voted for the Wall Street bailout. His White House is full of Wall Street executives …”
The Republican National Committee is in on the game, too. An April RNC video contrasted Obama’s actions with his anti-lobbyist, anti-special-interest, good-government rhetoric. The video lists some of the 50-plus registered lobbyists whom Obama hired in senior administration jobs and names some of the unregistered lobbyists, like Pfizer VP for Policy Sally Susman, who are Obama fundraisers. The RNC spot also drags up the off-campus meetings Obama administration aides held with lobbyists seemingly to dodge disclosure requirements.
These attacks exploit Obama’s weaknesses much more than past GOP and conservative standards do. After four years in the White House, Obama’s old radical associations — a favorite topic for much of the Right — are hardly relevant, especially compared to his more recent corporatist associations such as close ties to General Electric, Boeing, Wall Street types and subsidized green energy investors. And Democrats can easily refute the standard Obama-hates-business attack by pointing to all the businesses he has subsidized and bailed out.
So attacking Obama as a corporatist is more true, but it also more aptly taps into today’s political and economic climate. Americans know the game is rigged. Conservatives and Republicans can point out that Obama’s big-government programs are rigging it.
Romney and the RNC, however, can’t honesty hit too hard on corporatism, lobbyists and cronyism. Romney has surrounded himself with lobbyists, placing K Street veterans Ed Gillespie and Vin Weber in his inner circle and raising record amounts of money from lobbyist-bundlers. Romney will need help from Wall Street, K Street and the Chamber of Commerce. These power centers all favor bailouts, subsidies and the Export-Import Bank — the very Obama policies under fire. Is Romney really willing to run against the chamber’s lobbying agenda?
Romney’s own record as governor has the same whiff of government-business collusion that Obama’s presidency does. Romney gave out millions in taxpayer money to corporations in the industries that the government wanted to promote. And famously, like Obama, Romney also forced citizens to buy private health insurance.
In the light of Romney’s own record of corporatism and his technocratic, managerial disposition, look more closely at the Solyndra-themed ads from team Romney.
“President Obama is spending your tax dollars to create jobs,” Romney’s latest ad begins. “How’s he doing?” Then the ad lists all the failed or struggling companies who received federal financing under Obama.
Is that the problem? Is team Romney challenging Obama’s competency, rather than Obamanomics itself? Is the argument that Romney, what with his private equity background, would more efficiently manage the government efforts to create jobs? Should we back Romney because he would more accurately pick winners and losers?
Or will Romney — despite his past, his donors and his advisors — be willing to do what Obama didn’t do: Stand up to the corporate lobbyists and tell them to get their snouts out of the federal trough?
Timothy P.Carney, The Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Monday and Thursday, and his stories and blog posts appear on washingtonexaminer.com.
