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DEL.ICIO.USRequired reading: Business class is drifting away from the GOP
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Wall Street Journal has a must-read piece on the declining enthusiasm among fiscal conservatives for the national Republican party.
The gist:
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….
Some well-known business leaders have openly changed allegiances. Morgan Stanley Chairman and Chief Executive John Mack, formerly a big Bush backer, now supports Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York. John Canning Jr., chairman and chief executive of Madison Dearborn Partners, a large private-equity firm, now donates to Democrats after a lifetime as a Republican. Recently, he told one Democratic Party leader: “The Republican Party left me” — a twist on a line Ronald Reagan and his followers used when they abandoned the Democratic Party decades ago to protest its ’60s and ’70s-era liberalism.
…Polling data confirm business support for Republicans is eroding. In the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in September, 37% of professionals and managers identify themselves as Republican or leaning Republican, down from 44% three years ago.”
Comments
By Matt Jennings
October 3, 2007 9:44 AM | Link to this
Hopefully, this will lead to better environmental and labor practices both here and abroad, but I’m worried it will only corrupt many Democrats.
By fiscal conservative = libertarian
October 3, 2007 1:50 PM | Link to this
as long as the so-called social(ist) conservatives continue to increase the size and scope of government in order to force their agenda on America, the business class will have to pay for their expensive and ineffective programs. The money-changers are in the temple and in the halls of Congress because the GOP brought them into the tent.