Comment on The Belmont Club "Changing places"

The Republican Party arose in the 1850s around the following core principles and groups:
1) Freedom of labor
2) Small farms
3) Entrepreneurial manufacturers
4) Sound currency and strict banking standards
5) High tariffs.

The Democrats were the party of captive labor, large export driven agribusiness, large industries, debased currency with lax lending rules and free trade.

The only place where the parties have really changed their positions is with regard to free trade. The Democrats ostensibly call for stricter control over imports as a sop to labor. What really happened was that they learned that they could institute tariff walls and regulations to punish their rivals and then as the party of the larger industrialists and export driven agribusiness they could use the corrupt political process to buy influence and craft special exemptions in their own interest.

The evidence is clear that over time the Democratic approach introduces massive inefficiencies and results in general impoverishment. If uncertain how that can happen just go down to a GM plant, now owned by a troika of the US Government, the UAW and Fiat, and ask how it feels being down 45%, or walk over to a Hummer dealer and ask how they think being owned by China will work out and how those trade barriers, tax rates, labor and environmental regulations, and destruction of the financial markets to support the friends of Franks and Dodd are working out for them?

My submission for a campaign theme for use on either side of the pond:
You owe nobody anything. You don't have to apologize to anybody."