| This should not be a surprise.
The Republican Party, known since the late 19th century as the party of business, is losing its lock on that title...
Some business leaders are drifting away from the party because of the war in Iraq, the growing federal debt and a conservative social agenda they don't share. In manufacturing sectors such as the auto industry, some Republicans want direct government help with soaring health-care costs, which Republicans in Washington have been reluctant to provide. And some business people want more government action on global warming, arguing that a bolder plan is not only inevitable, but could spur new industries.
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 of out fealty to ideological right-wing class solidarity. Here's Atrios.
Digby:
GM says it needs to cut costs. Perhaps it would like to work with the Democrats and the Unions to get universal health insurance. It would be good for their workers, good for the country and good for the bottom line.
This is true. The failure of big business to step up in this area has long mystified me. It can't be explained by anything other than cultural biases of the men with money.
These people are becoming independents or depoliticized. Their ideas don't work, and their very identities as masters of the universe is shown as a sad and tragic lifelong fraud. People like Tom Tauke of Verizon, who probably believes that Verizon isn't censoring political speech, fall into this camp. Defense contractors, franchise restauranteurs, telecom executives, PR companies, agribusiness, health insurance and pharam execs - that's where these people live, roughly speaking.
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. In fact, this is the group many of us belong to, though the institutional isolation of 'the left' makes people in various Web 2.0 and sustainable energy businesses make it hard to recognize. The new ideas and new economic and cultural structures that can govern a 21st century economy are being designed in this sector, which combines philanthropy in the form of corporate structures like Google.org and Good Capital with sustainable business practices and new companies that incorporate the customer as an integral and democratic piece of the profit chain.
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. |
