Free-market Dems push back

(PNI) Could it be that the free market and the Democratic Party are not parting company after all?

Over the last several weeks, President Barack Obama's re-election campaign aggressively has skewered Republican candidate Mitt Romney for his work at the private-equity firm Bain Capital. The attack includes ads in which Bain and Romney are vilified as "vampires" preying on American workers in their pursuit of personal profit.

The Obama ad campaign builds on an ardently held liberal view that the fault for the current economic malaise should be laid entirely at the feet of people like Mitt Romney. Which is to say capitalism. Which is to say, the free market.

In a nutshell, that is the raison d'etre of Occupy Wall Street. It is the motivation behind the national debate over tax "fairness" as it applies to that notorious subset of Americana, "the 1 percent."

And, as noted, it is a major theme of President Obama's re-election campaign. Whether he intentionally wishes it or not, the president is stigmatizing the free market in his critique of Romney and Bain Capital.

There are people who have a problem with that. And they are not all Republicans.

While delicately acknowledging that Romney's private-sector experience is "fair game" for criticism, a surprising number of influential Democrats have effectively said "enough" to the constant beat-down of the private-equity business, an important subset of the free market.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a key member of the Obama re-election team, has called the attacks "nauseating to the American public." In the same breath that he called on Republicans to stop resurrecting the specter of Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, he demanded that his own side "stop attacking private equity."

Booker has been underscored by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who called Bain "a perfectly fine company." Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell also has said he is displeased with the tone of attacks against an important tool of the free market.

Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee criticized Booker … for later walking back his criticisms of the Obama ad campaign. Ford observed that private equity is "a good thing in many, many instances." Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., made a point of noting that Bain had "done a good job for their investors," a group that included many retirees and union pension funds.

Then on Thursday, former President Bill Clinton stepped voluntarily into the off-campaign-message fray, offering abundant praise for Romney and Bain.

Clinton called Romney's work at Bain "sterling" and added that it constituted "a good business career."

The impetus behind all the Democratic push-back against the "vampire" imagery is not hostility to Obama's re-election. Every one of the campaign critics bracketed his comments with support for the president.

More accurately, their comments represent the return of an aggregation of Democrats who do not reflexively view business or free enterprise as a bad thing. That was a perspective promoted by the Democratic Leadership Council, a pro-business wing of the Democratic Party that enjoyed much popularity during the Clinton years, including from Clinton himself.

Led by famous "third-way" advocate Al From, the DLC backed the 1996 welfare reforms and some school-choice plans, and opposed a government-directed single-payer health-care plan. It was viewed as enthusiastically pro-business.

It nearly dissolved in 2011 as the Democratic Party became increasingly infused with a view of business and free markets as malevolent and undertaxed.

The reaction of these important Democrats to the anti-market sentiments of the "vampire" ads is refreshing. If it leads to a resurrection of a more business-friendly party, all the better.

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