Adventures In Capitalism

You know the appeal of venture capitalism is losing its bite in America when even Republicans doubt it.

Mitt Romney used his New Hampshire primary win to denigrate the opposition for playing politics with the American capitalist system - not just President Obama but fellow Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry. Romney says that both presdiential candidates focus more on the resentment of those who geet laid off in a bad economy rather than come up with a more positive economic message like his own - about how how government can help people become wealthy.  Both Gingrich and Perry have attacked Romney for how he made money in his job at Bain Capital - buying companies and firing a lot of people to make them more "competitive." Rather than explain how a venture capital firm works and explain to voters why this is a preferred method for resuscitating companies, Romney instead re-iterated his desire to help everyone become rich and accused his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of giving the Democrats fodder for the fall campaign while accusing President Obama of wanting to transform America into a European-style social welfare state.

With Romney having moved to the right in his party, Obama is now obliged to defend his own turn from the center of American politics and explain how his leftward drift on economic issues - taxation, health care - is meant to benefit everyone. For the President, the 2012 campaign will be an effort to present the case for more government intervention in the economy even as Romney is already making his case (again, the old adage that our system allows people to work hard and hopefully become wealthy) against it.  But fewer people are buying that Horatio Alger message these days. Expect Obama's talking points to reflect the economic speech he gave in Kansas in December.

Obama doesn't have to worry about being called a socialist - he's not even that much of a liberal. But he can point to how he's created more jobs than Mitt Romney. General Motors has been hiring lately. Chrysler's sales were up 26 percent in 2011. Bailing out auto companies with government money did more for capitalism than taking over companies and firing people - or just letting them go bankrupt and possibly out of business, as Romney advocated in his opposition to the auto company bailouts.