Republicans, this is socialism too you know!

Let’s put aside just for a smidgen of a second all the self-gloating talk about how Republicans are the small government, Laissez-faire, capitalistic, free market anti-socialist Party and take a quick look at what our current conservative Republican presidential administration has given us.

I’m not going to say anything about the current deficit or how the GOP has expanded government more than any president since FDR. I’ll leave it alone for the time being and let Republicans just focus on one piece of current GOP policy and that is the federal government’s bail out of FAILED businesses.

In March of this year the Republican-led government issued the first Great Depression Era bailout of a failed lender-- a bailout worth $29 billion—to Bear Stearns. That’s taxpayer money going towards propping up a failed business. Say what you want, but Laissez-faire shouldn’t be one of them.

Today we hear that after a rough weekend the government has again decided to bail out two more lenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, this time worth $300 billion. This bailout has absolutely no strings attached. The deal is to give taxpayer money at below market interest rates (anyone say market interference?) to business owners so that they can keep their failing businesses up and running.

Answer me this. Government has no more an obligation to give welfare to business owners than it does to employees or those victimized by the practices that led to the business failing in the first place. So how come government money to the rich isn’t welfare or socialism but money to the poor or middle class is?

Republicans are no more small government than they are anti-socialist, and they are no more moral than they are free market saviors. What they want—all they want—is to sit and bump peter heads and talk about their world where government is a ruling class elite not worthy to anyone who may want to extend that same government to those of a lower class.