Attacking crony capitalism is only politics – rather than policy – if you’ve lost the sense of policy apart from politics. It’s Sen. Lee who has it right (it’s good policy that leads to winning politics):
So what is crony capitalism, politically speaking? Is it a welcome restorative for a party pegged as being in the pockets of big business? Or a worthy policy initiative albeit with little public resonance? Perhaps the best answer came a year ago at the Heritage Foundation, when Sen. Mike Lee was delivering the outline of his reform agenda. Lee said:
“The first step in a true conservative reform agenda must be to end this kind of preferential policymaking. Beyond simply being the right thing to do, it is a pre-requisite for earning the moral authority and political credibility to do anything else.
Why should the American people trust our ideas about middle-class entitlements… when we’re still propping up big banks?”
The GOP has so damaged its reputation that even a sound policy fight now seems tricky to conservative publications.
Via The Tricky Politics of Fighting Crony Capitalism @ The American Conservative.