NEW GOP CAUSE? –  AT 8:29 A.M. ET:  And not a minute too soon.  The Republican Party is a free-enterprise party.  But it has often been accused of averting its eyes to the abuses within the economic system.  The accusations are correct, and now some leading Republicans are determined to correct course.  Cheer them on.  From the conservative Washington Examiner:

When Michele Bachmann attacked Rick Perry in this week's debate for helping a politically connected drug company, and Newt Gingrich attacked GE and even oil companies for benefitting from targeted tax breaks, it stirred a bit of a reaction on the Left.

"Wait, being a crony capitalist is a problem now?" journalist Dave Roberts, a liberal environmentalist, asked rhetorically.

It's actually an important question.

Although the Republicans' professed belief in free markets would imply a rejection of corporate welfare, GOP cries of "crony capitalism" and critiques of subsidy sucklers and regulatory robber barons usually come only from the party's back bench. It's striking, then, to hear this talk from prominent Republicans on center stage at a presidential debate.

It's part of a small but growing trend toward free-market populism in Republican rhetoric, if not action.

When Gingrich called out General Electric by name for profiting from special tax breaks and green subsidies, he was expressing a growing conservative distaste for GE, which has visibly embraced President Obama's subsidize-and-regulate economic policy. On everything from climate change and windmills to health care and embryonic stem cells, CEO Jeffrey Immelt has positioned GE to profit from big government, often lending the company's unmatched lobbying clout to the administration's efforts.

Obama's pick of Immelt as jobs czar was a fitting symbol of the symbiotic relationship between the industrial giant and Obama's agenda.

Bachmann, meanwhile, steered the discussion of Perry's 2007 unilateral mandate of an HPV vaccine to the question of cronyism, benefitting drugmaker Merck. "We cannot forget that in the midst of this executive order there is a big drug company that made millions of dollars because of this mandate."

And let us not forget that Sarah Palin is one of the pioneers in the Republican Party in taking on crony capitalists.  her speech in Iowa last week, now widely circulated, focused in part on that issue.

Churchill said that democracy was the worst system in the world, except for all the others.  The same can be said of capitalism.  It has produced more prosperity for more people than any economic system in history.  But it is plagued with problems and corruption.  I'm glad to see that it's the GOP that's starting to address the problems in a thoughtful way.  The idea is to preserve the good in the system, while rooting out the bad.  It would be great if conservatives led the way.  If so-called "liberals" do it, true free enterprise will be crippled.

September 15, 2011