As Stanek and Andrew are probably well aware of by now, I work in an office with some pretty hardcore Republicans - every day they listen to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh on the radio, complain about the liberals and certain minorities in the city, etc. etc. Usually I just tune it out and concentrate on my work (I have a handy pair of headphones and an iPhone with a lot of Beatles music on it which has been instrumental in preventing migraines), and they have always been more than pleasant towards me personally so I can't really complain. But a few days ago they mentioned something to me that struck me as overwhelmingly ridiculous. According to them, the conservative radio shows that they listen to have been stressing that businesses are ready to hire again and are sitting on "piles of money", however they want to see how the next presidential election turns out because they're scared that President Obama might win again.
This helped put into words a suspicion I've always had about the Republican party. Maybe my theory is nothing new (Stanek can probably answer that better than I can and I find it hard to believe that nobody has connected the dots here), but considering that business owners and corporate executives are almost exclusively Republican, aren't they essentially holding the economy hostage to support their preferred political party? If what these conservative radio shows are arguing is true, and I don't know if it is or even that they actually said it (and I'm sure as hell not going to re-listen to their shows to find out), then the economy is supposedly getting better but business owners are holding it back because Obama is president. This creates a pretty interesting self-fulfilling prophecy among conservatives who think Democrats are bad for the economy. How can economic strength ever be used to gauge the effectiveness of a Democratic president when businesses are willing to cripple the economy until a Republican is elected? And I know what conservatives would say in response: "Democrats are innately bad for business so employers are just protecting themselves." But all that does is bypass the issue and fuel the self-fulfilling prophecy to carry on.
Again, I have no idea how true this is or if Rush or Glenn Beck even made this argument. However, it still makes me wonder about businesses manipulating the economy for political reasons in general. And as I said before I don't expect this to be all that revolutionary of an idea, but I am interested in what you guys think or know. At least it makes me more confident that President Obama is doing a better job than people seem to think.
This helped put into words a suspicion I've always had about the Republican party. Maybe my theory is nothing new (Stanek can probably answer that better than I can and I find it hard to believe that nobody has connected the dots here), but considering that business owners and corporate executives are almost exclusively Republican, aren't they essentially holding the economy hostage to support their preferred political party? If what these conservative radio shows are arguing is true, and I don't know if it is or even that they actually said it (and I'm sure as hell not going to re-listen to their shows to find out), then the economy is supposedly getting better but business owners are holding it back because Obama is president. This creates a pretty interesting self-fulfilling prophecy among conservatives who think Democrats are bad for the economy. How can economic strength ever be used to gauge the effectiveness of a Democratic president when businesses are willing to cripple the economy until a Republican is elected? And I know what conservatives would say in response: "Democrats are innately bad for business so employers are just protecting themselves." But all that does is bypass the issue and fuel the self-fulfilling prophecy to carry on.
Again, I have no idea how true this is or if Rush or Glenn Beck even made this argument. However, it still makes me wonder about businesses manipulating the economy for political reasons in general. And as I said before I don't expect this to be all that revolutionary of an idea, but I am interested in what you guys think or know. At least it makes me more confident that President Obama is doing a better job than people seem to think.
P.S. - This is the 200th post at the Speakeasy! Grab a beer and celebrate.
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