A quick Facebook note I spied:
Throughout our great Nation’s history, its citizens have risen and joined together to fight against many injustices. Today, the Occupy Wall St. Movement stands up to fight against the corruption and greed that has taken over our political sytstem (sic) and financial system. I will proudly join them on Tuesday in NYC.
This came from Buddy Roemer, who is on perhaps the lowest tier of known GOP Presidential candidates. Well, if he’s looking for votes or sympathy he’s not going to find a lot of it there, nor will he attract all that much attention. He’ll just be a sideshow to the freak show that’s going on there.
And it brings up a legitimate question: where exactly do populism, socialism, and anarchism meet? Obviously Roemer’s shtick is that he’s a populist candidate who rails against big money in politics and vows to take no donations greater than $100. That’s all well and good if he’s happy with losing to a guy who’s shooting for a billion in Barack Obama.
But by throwing in his lot with people who aren’t happy with the system because they’re not living up to their own potential, it doesn’t bode real well for his campaign. Granted, their low budgets work just fine with his low-budget effort but when the rubber meets the road is this approach going to create any jobs? Unfortunately, the people of Occupy Wall Street have the wrong bogeyman in mind because they’d only replace the corporatism they see with the authoritarianism of someplace like China or the old Soviet Union – and we all see how well that worked.
Should we rein in the large multinational financial institutions? Perhaps, but that’s not the answer. The reason many ran into trouble was their bending over backwards to do things counterproductive to their bottom line at the government’s behest. But it’s hard to say no when the government’s attitude seems to be, “nice little bank you got there…be a shame if something happened to it.” There was some movie about an offer that couldn’t be refused, wasn’t there?
So Buddy Roemer may get his fifteen minutes of fame, and who knows? Maybe he’ll get the bump in the polls he needs to qualify for a debate so he doesn’t have to speak to himself at these things.
But if he’s staking the claim of being a conservative – the natural path to the GOP nomination – he’s not going to be among friends where he’s going. Think of it this way – if there were jobs created for the slackers occupying Wall Street and other venues with too much time on their hands, there wouldn’t be a protest. We need to elect a conservative standardbearer to get the capital freed to create jobs, for businesses are losing patience waiting for that other shoe they know will drop unless Barack Obama is defeated next year.
To think otherwise is just plain silly.
One thought on “Roemer: I will occupy Wall Street”
Comments are closed.