Category — populism

Republicans have traded the “compassionate conservative” for the “populist capitalist”:

“John McCain is a populist. He believes in free markets; he believes in limited government and having the free enterprise system produce the jobs and the prosperity that he seeks, but he does think, as did Teddy Roosevelt, that you do need government there with some oversight and some regulation to avoid excess.”

It’s an odd message for a man whose base doesn’t trust him.  If McCain thinks he can win by trying to attract disaffected Clinton voters while driving conservatives away, he’s got another thing coming.  Those people are going to vote for the liberal, not the quasi-liberal.

Not long ago, Michele Obama was pointing to Barack’s Iowa win as evidence he could unite people.  As Michele so quaintly pointed out at the time, there “ain’t no black people in Iowa”. 

Now the worm has turned.  The “newly minted”, but always present populist message is being delivered by Barack to largely black communities with an “us versus them” class warfare mentality:

“We also know that times haven’t been too tough for everyone in our economy — because the top Wall Street CEOs have been doing just fine,” he continued. He referred to a new study that the top 50 CEOs were making over $15 million each. “Despite the fact that many of their companies were having a bad year. Think about that.”

You know who else is being helped by Wall Street during the downturn?  Barack Obama.  His campaign is raking in huge contributions from the same Wall Street fat cats he berates for not helping others.  

Having fumbled the Jeremiah Wright issue, Barack is returning to old Democratic themes by taking up the phony populist banner of John Edwards.