Is the GOP Losing Business? Two liberal views --

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: October 2, 2007
Is the G.O.P. Losing Business?
By Tobin Harshaw



“The Republican Party, known since the late 19th century as the party of business, is losing its lock on that title,” reports The Wall Street Journal’s Jackie Calmes. “New evidence suggests a potentially historic shift in the Republican Party’s identity — what strategists call its ‘brand.’ The votes of many disgruntled fiscal conservatives and other lapsed Republicans are now up for grabs, which could alter U.S. politics in the 2008 elections and beyond.”

Paul Curtis at the The Right’s Field, which monitors the Republican candidates from the left, thinks the G.O.P. frontrunner isn’t helping matters: “Rudy says ‘fiscal conservatism’ but his own campaign has embraced voodoo economics straight up. There may be a consensus in favor of supply-side tomfoolery among GOP elites, but such consensus just doesn’t exist among Republican voters in general. There isn’t even a consensus on traditional fiscal conservatism. Rudy’s hoping to paper over the emerging crisis within the conservative coalition, but he’s only encouraging the rot.”

The liberal blogger Matt Stoller, writing at Open Left, sees a broader sociological trend at work:

"There are roughly two cultural parts of the business community. One is the 'managerial' sector, the corporate group that took power during the Reaganite era and is basically illiberal in orientation. These are the people who are running companies like General Motors into the ground out of fealty to ideological right-wing class solidarity … These people are becoming independents or depoliticized. Their ideas don’t work, and their very identities as masters of the universe (are) shown as a sad and tragic lifelong fraud …

The second group is 'entrepreneurial' in culture, not large and corporate. This is the group that sees new industries in green technology, and will swing to a liberal model of governance … This sector is where our new governance models are going to come from, though the political piece is really our job and the policy details will come from emerging public spiritedness in academia. Building the bridges between the business left and the open left is going to take 20 years, but it’s starting to happen."...

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/is-the-gop-losing-business/index.html?ref=opinion

[MADem]

1. Well, business is getting more "green" and "sustainable" every day.

And that concept is in direct opposition to the slash-and-burn nature of the GOP. And that concept appeals to a wide sector--not just lefties, but anyone who has kids and wants to leave them something other than a filthy planet...

RESPONSIBLE businesses are popular nowadays. That fits in more with people with a stake in the future, as well as a left-of-center philosophy.

[Demeter]

2. I'll Believe It When I See It---Business Schools Shutting Down

Or being shut down for credentialling people like W and his enablers and cronies....