Coyote Blog

Someone from the National Council of Mayors or Cities or some such group called me wanting to meet.  I asked him what he wanted.  Blah blah blah.  I asked him after a bunch of doublespeak about learning about how my great business operates what he really wanted.  He said he wanted to share with me Federal and State and City programs to help my business.  The conversation then went approximately this way:

Me:  I don't want any of that stuff.  I don't want other people to be forced to pay for my business

Caller:  So you are a Republican?

I would love it if Republican's narrowly branded themselves as folks who don't take money by force from others.  I would call myself one.  But unfortunately Republicans and Chamber of Commerce type CEO's who nominally call themselves Republicans wallow all the time in such corporate cronyism.

Further, Republicans spend a lot of time on social crusades that drive me crazy.  The other day at a party, I was talking to a number of entrepreneurs who all should have found a natural home in the Republican party given their economic views.  But they were all Democrats, most of them for the simple reason that they did not want to be associated with Republican social crusades.  I talked to a guy for hours who despised Obamacare but voted for Obama twice because he did not want to be associated, for example, with Republican's anti-gay position (e.g. Rick Perry).

Of course, this is a double edged sword.  There are likely many Republican voters who are fiscally liberal but vote Republican for its commitment to opposing gay marriage and abortion and the like.

PS-  The call actually went on for a while.  He asked me what he could help me with.  What is my number one problem?  I told him, honestly, we have put everything else on hold, all our growth plans have been frozen, until we figure out how to minimize the costs of the PPACA on us.   This was not something he seemed to want to discuss.