The GOP now condones large, intrusive government and presidential attacks on job creators — Jeff Bezos and Amazon today, anyone’s guess tomorrow.
How many times have we heard Republicans talk about the need for a limited, decentralized government that stays out of the way of large and small businesses?
In 2009, Larry Kudlow, now director of President Trump’s National Economic Council, warned that President Obama was “declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds.”
In 2010, Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee published a report concluding that “the Obama administration has created a regulatory environment that is suffocating the private sector’s ability to create jobs and grow businesses.”
In January 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said “Obama demonizes and denigrates almost every sector of our economy.”
Congressional Republicans were so concerned with “executive overreach” that they formed a task force in 2016 to challenge Obama’s executive orders.
For the better part of this decade, Republicans have been adamant about the need to protect job creators and private enterprise from the shadow of the big, bad federal government.
It doesn’t take an active imagination to guess how Republicans would react to a Democratic president using his office to specifically target and attack one of the most successful entrepreneurs and businesses in the world. And yet, as Trump continues to wage a one-sided war against Jeff Bezos and Amazon, the company he founded, those same Republicans who spent the decade attacking Obama and defending businesses and entrepreneurs have gone quiet.
Republicans appear to have traded their pro-business principles in favor of their anti-media hatred. Bezos is also the owner of The Washington Post, and Trump has made it no secret that he views the news media as the “enemy of the people.” His attacks against Amazon are clearly linked to his unprecedented war on the media.
