As populist fervor sweeps the electorate, both parties oddly seem ready to nominate practitioners of crony capitalism — with Donald Trump representing the buy-side of cronyism, and Hillary Clinton the sell-side.
By teaming up with Carly Fiorina, the most capable and incisive critic of cronyism this election, Ted Cruz is painting the path forward for conservatism and the GOP.
“Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, they are two side of the same coin,” Fiorina explained on Wednesday afternoon as Cruz introduced her as his theoretical running mate. “Hillary Clinton has made her millions selling access and influence from inside the system. And Donald Trump has made his billions buying people like Hillary Clinton.”
This is true, and it’s the best way to attack Clinton in the general election. Every step along the way, the Clintons have blended their political power with their fundraising and personal wealth in a way that reeks of quid-pro-quo, with the Clinton Foundation and Bill’s speaking fees as the most recent examples.
“They are not going to challenge the crony capitalist and they are not going to challenge the Washington insiders,” Fiorina said of Clinton and Trump. “They are not going to challenge the lobbyists. My gosh, their campaign is filled with them. No. They are not going to challenge the system. They are the system.”
While some conservatives and libertarians think the good fight today is to squelch populism, Cruz and Fiorina are trying to claim the mantle of populism. They want to win some of the populist energy away from Trump, whose populism is of the familiar racial and big-government type, and put it to work for conservatism instead.
“Our entrenched political system,” Fiorina said Wednesday, “our system of crony capitalism, now it works if you’re a big company, but it doesn’t work if you’re a small company. It works if you’re wealthy or powerful or well-connected like Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, just as a for example, but it doesn’t work for the rest of us.”
During her own presidential run, Fiorina more explicitly pinned the game-rigging on big government. Crony Capitalim, she said, “is what happens when you have big government get bigger and bigger and more complicated so that only big business can thrive. And big business uses the processes of big government to advantage its position…”
Her solution: “The only way to level the playing field is to lessen the power and the complexity and the reach of both big government and big business.”
Fiorina on Wednesday made a crucial point about Cruz. In “challenging the system,” she said, “You make enemies. So I am reassured and I am proud of some of the enemies that Ted Cruz has made.”
The ethanol lobby, went to the mat to oppose Cruz in the Iowa caucuses, because Cruz was the firmest opponent of the ethanol mandate (Fiorina was squishy in her opposition). Terry Branstad, Iowa’s Republican governor and the father of ethanol lobby leader Eric Branstad, basically issued a Fatwa against Cruz.
Cruz is hated on K Street. Lobbyists Bob Dole, Rudy Giuliani, Trent Lott and Bob Livingston have all said they would prefer Trump to Cruz. Part of the reason: Cruz has consistently opposed the corporate welfare and big spending lobbyists seek.
Cruz is perhaps the most important opponent of corporate welfare and crony capitalism in Washington. He not only opposed the ethanol mandate in Iowa, he railed against the Export-Import Bank, a corporate welfare agency conservatives managed to kill for about five months last year.
Cruz, on the Senate floor last year, explained why the fight over Ex-Im, a small agency that gives out only about $25 billion in subsidies a year, was so important. “To every Democrat who rails against big money and the corruption of Washington, as to every Democrat who styles himself or herself a populist, their actions on this matter speak far louder than their words.” Every Democrat but Bernie Sanders voted to revive Ex-Im. Hillary Clinton said she wants to put “Ex-Im on steroids.”
And in a year when the electorate’s populist sensibilities have turned them against the GOP, Cruz’s critique during the Ex-Im debate — when half of Republican lawmakers supported Ex-Im — was on point. “Republicans also are listening to K Street and the lobbyists. Why? It is not complicated. The giant corporations that are getting special favors from the taxpayers hire an army of lobbyists who write campaign checks after campaign checks.”
The game is rigged in America today, and big government is doing the rigging.
Picking a running-mate while he is a serious underdog in the primary is clearly a Hail Mary pass. The odds are against Cruz and Fiorina. But their message should be seen as the future of the party.
Four years from now, Republicans will probably be trying to unseat President Hillary Clinton. Cruz and Fiorina today are laying out the formula: Republicans need to harness the populist fervor, and dismantle the Democrats’ claim — which the media have swallowed and which Republicans have generally left unchallenged — that big government serves the little guy.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — both big-government liberals — are walking proof that big government tends to serve the well connected and keep down the little guy. The Cruz-Fiorina message is the only viable challenge to this partnership of plunder.
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
