I wish Santorum would ditch this “revive manufacturing” nonsense.
It makes him look like he doesn’t understand free markets, free trade, and limited government.
I disagree. Every election cycle we craft a message that leaves the folks in the rust belt without anything to interest them. It always focuses on nebulous concepts of Free Markets that don't resonate well with this segment. We are basically ceding these voters to the Rats who sell them on Big Gov't hand outs. This Manufacturing message is why he is starting to interest old Reagan Dems and some Union people who care about this. When it boils down to it, he is just lowering the taxes on this sector more than he lowers the rest. Not really a terrible sin. Ideally, I would love to see him zero all taxes on business for a couple years, but this is a good start.
“I wish Santorum would ditch this ‘revive manufacturing’ nonsense.”
I think that’s a key part of Santorum’s electoral appeal. Jefferson wrote of the unique American Agrarian Ideal: “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God... etc”
There could also be an “industrial heart” of America that is a bit withered. I don’t want to get deep into how much economic sense it makes to incentivize manufacturing specifically, other that to say that it probably wouldn’t effect overall economics that much, and that there are natl security reasons for maintaining manufacturing proficiency, but the main thing is that it fits into the election meme that Santorum is on the side of the working man. So this will help your avg Joes, and Joe the Plumbers, rationalize, so to speak, votes for the republican, this time.
So I say all the more power to Santorum on this. And maybe it’s real. Maybe he really could revive manufacturing, and help the working man, and industrial (swing) states.
No, it means he really understands it. No country is going to maintain a strong economy without a manufacturing base. Research and development jobs go to where the manufacturing base is.
America needs something to trade other than our debt or equity in our remaining companies.
He spent the day stoking up the union base for which he is a proponent while promoting himself as a socon - which will not work.
Didn’t work in PA either. Where Rick goes in Michigan says more about WHAT he says.
“I wish Santorum would ditch this “revive manufacturing” nonsense.....It makes him look like he doesn’t understand free markets, free trade, and limited government.”
I am SO SICK of everything I buy these days being made in China. I actually get happy when I find something made in Mexico. IF “Free Markets” means a continued influx of Red Chinese goods that are short term “painless” but in the long term set us up for Chinese World dominence. Then I guess I’m against “free markets.” We MUST bring manufacturing BACK to North America and STOP Chinese economic warfare which is financing a large bigup of Chinese Military might in the Pacific like the Japenese leading up to WWII.
I’m willing to pay more and bring work back. So, IF that isn’t being for “free markets”...so be it.
Lots of other people have already weighed in here. Like it or not, this is a key part of Rick Santorum’s appeal to conservative blue collar voters. It's more appealing to the “rustbelt” states of the upper Midwest — states that we absolutely **MUST** win in order to win the general election — but it also could be refitted to appeal to Southerners who are upset about the loss of the textile mills and similar industry that first moved out of the Midwest to the South before moving overseas.
Now Yam, whether you like it or not, there is a conservative argument for being “America First.” I do not believe the federal government belongs in the business of selecting winners or losers in the economy when it comes to choices between American companies, but from a conservative perspective, just exactly what is wrong with saying we need a certain minimum amount of manufacturing capability in the United States for national defense purposes? Just exactly what is wrong with specifying that the federal government will give preference to bidders based in the United States?
The federal government has no business telling Americans what to buy or who to buy it from. As a native Michigander, I refuse to buy a foreign-brand car, and I choose to buy American-made products when I can, even if they're more expensive. The federal government should not be making that choice for me, but it certainly has every right to make that choice in its own purchasing decisions, and in setting tax policy and tariff policy to avoid the complete destruction of our manufacturing capacity.
Don't get me wrong — I really do understand the view of George Bush and his friends that capitalist democracies build roads and infrastructure, not bombs. Bush and his allies made a deliberate decision to try to enable the capitalist-minded people in China in the hope they will prevail in their own country's internal politics.
Unfortunately, what that has generated is not democracy but a fascist or Prussian-style militarized market economy. Read articles like this in the New York Times and ask if that's the country we want controlling our ability to manufacture key items we need for our economy:
Why China’s Political Model Is Superior
By Eric X. Li
Published: February 16, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/opinion/why-chinas-political-model-is-superior.html?_r=1
Notice I did **NOT** say I oppose trade with China. I believe trading with China is a good thing and needs to continue. I do, however, believe we have an important national security issue if we completely export all of our manufacturing capability overseas. To argue that free trade ends wars is simply naive, speaking both historically and pragmatically, because some people simply will not view their self-interest in purely economic terms.
We have no peer-level military competitor on the world stage right now. If we have one in the future, it is most likely to be China. We can hope that China will become a capitalist and democratic economic rival, as Japan has become, and if that happens I'll be very happy.
If it doesn't happen, our current policy on exporting our manufacturing capacity is heading us down a road that leads to a very bad end.