Bad For Business

Now this is an interesting story from Bloomberg Business Week, stating that there's a sizable chunk of the business community that thinks the Tea Party's economic platform of "apply chainsaw to everything" might actually be bad for businesses.  The problem is, even going through all the Tea Party's credo of protectionism, ending subsidies to businesses, and ending the Fed, it's the rigid ideology that scares the Country Club Republicans the most.

The movement's energy could help boost Republican turnout, but it has also forced the party to spend time and money on primary contests in which inexperienced candidates—Angle, O'Donnell—have jeopardized Republican control of Congress. Despite her call to privatize Social Security, Angle is in a virtual tie with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and has raised an astonishing $14 million in the past three months. If Republicans fail to win the congressional majorities that seemed within reach earlier this year, she and other Tea Party candidates may take the blame.

To the movement's true believers, however, winning is less important than ideological purity. "We need people up here who understand that we've got to get back to limited government, and we cannot afford to have other Republicans who don't get that message," DeMint said recently on Capitol Hill. One cornerstone of their faith—the notion that large corporations are leeches sucking the blood of the people—is sharply at odds with Republican theology that has held sway for generations. "The business community writ large is the essence of the inside-the-Beltway type," says lobbyist Rich Gold, who represents Dow Chemical (DOW), Next Era Energy (NEE), and other energy companies. "And these people are the essence of the outside-the-Beltway type."

The Tea Party's chief theologian is Beck, the cable-TV personality whose rise has mirrored the movement's. Beck's world is full of demons, but the devil that enraged the sold-out crowd in a ballroom at the Atlantic City Hilton on Aug. 5 wasn't Obama or even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Give the money to the people!" Beck shouted to a packed room of around 1,500. "Give us our money back—not to Goldman Sachs! (GS)"

In other words, all this populist stuff is starting to scare business as much as the Democrats actually holding businesses accountable is. Republicans may be happy to hand the keys to the economy back to Goldman Sachs, but the Tea Party certainly isn't going to put up with that.

Not in the least. Crazy isn't good for business.

I'd mention something about lying down with dogs getting you fleas, but I'd have to have some sort of sympathy for business first.