The Republican members of the House of Representatives had a retreat last week and minority leader Eric Cantor had to tell them some surprising news and that is that not all Americans are business owners.
Ninety percent of Americans work for someone else,” Cantor said, according to a source in the room. “Most of them not only will never own their own business, for most of them that isn’t their dream. Their dream is to have a good job, with an income that will allow them to support their family.”
“We shouldn’t miss the chance to talk to these people,” Cantor continued, according to the source, “which is why we will present and pass our plans to relieve the middle class squeeze.”
As the author of the piece Byron York says:
What was extraordinary about that portion of Cantor’s presentation was not that it was out of place — it was entirely on-target for a political party hoping to win elections in 2014 — but that it came six years into the economic downturn, and decades into a protracted decline in middle-class standards of living. Could it actually have taken Republicans that long to realize they should address such problems, especially when Democrats have made huge gains appealing directly to middle-class voters?
Apparently, yes. And even now, not all House Republicans are entirely on board. “It’s something that’s been growing and taking time for members to get comfortable with,” says a House GOP aide, “because they did spend the last decade talking about small business owners.”
Not only are most Americans not business owners, many of them may actually hate the people they work for so for the Republicans to show undying love for that narrow segment of the population and treat everyone else as moochers and looters never made any sense. What is surprising is that they haven’t received a real drubbing at the polls.
A few other tips for Eric Cantor:
-- In addition to the fact that not everyone is a business owner, the current economic model prohibits everyone from being a business owner. Large scale production and services requires people working for a business owner, or, alternatively, communist practices (i.e. every worker is an equal share owner of the business) that the Republican party are scared to death of.
-- Not everyone can be a CEO. See the first bullet above.
-- The massive wealth of your primary donors was accomplished by virtue of keeping worker salaries as low as possible. The increasing wealth disparity is accomplished by this method. So you simply need to tell your primary donors to stop keeping the lion’s share of the business income for themselves. Problem solved.
…“because they did spend the last decade talking about small business owners.”
Not only are most Americans not business owners, many of them may actually hate the people they work for so for the Republicans to show undying love for that narrow segment of the population and treat everyone else as moochers and looters never made any sense. What is surprising is that they haven’t received a real drubbing at the polls.
I guess the “moochers and looters” keep voting for Republicans for the very same reasons the small business owners keep voting for Republicans. The Republicans never actually does anything to help either of these groups; in fact, in most cases the Democratic platform woudl be beneficial to both groups. So it’s a mystery why either of these groups keep thinking that voting Republican is in their best interests.
I think it’s pretty silly coming from Mr. Thanking-Business-Owners-On-Labor-Day himself. Maybe he’s learned!
This sounds tentatively like good news. This message was for the republican house members, not just for the voters through press conferences or whatever. Since the message comes from other republicans, maybe there house members will listen. Then, maybe they will develop a plan that will actually help. Then, maybe they can sell that plan to the conservative voters. It will be a true orwellian test.
Maybe this will encourage the democrats to develop an even better plan, and then my faith in the functionality of our democracy will be a little bit improved. If the plans don’t include expansionary fiscal policy, with the money directed at the bottom 50th percentile, then I’m not buying it.