Rep. Fred Upton (MI) published an op/ed in Politico today. Read an excerpt here:
“What are we doing about the financial contributors?...We have all this power and we aren’t using it.” This is how President Richard M. Nixon expressed his frustration in the months before the 1972 election. Soon after, he decided to use the Internal Revenue Service, the attorney general’s office and any other means necessary to intimidate his political opponents. Nixon’s “Enemies List” is now infamous.
Judging by the flurry of recent speeches, press releases and op-ed articles criticizing right-of-center organizations and donors, the left appears to have taken a chapter out of the Nixon playbook.
These efforts look like an orchestrated campaign to intimidate and silence opposition to President Barack Obama’s agenda. Any other day, these same people would be the first to trumpet the virtues of free speech. But in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United vs. FEC decision, the administration and its congressional allies seem to have decided that the First Amendment takes a back seat to their political priorities.
Most U.S. business owners have little interest in politics – they most likely prefer to be making products and creating jobs. There often are not enough hours in the day to worry about what is happening on both the shop floor and the House floor.
But many folks, who through some good fortune and a lot of hard work made good on the American Dream, want to support and promote policies that will allow this country to prosper. Washington is moving the nation away from the bedrock principles that American prosperity is based on – limited government, free enterprise and individual liberty.Despite controlling the White House and both houses of Congress by wide margins, despite passing much of their domestic agenda and despite adding trillions of dollars to the deficit, Democrats have been unable to reduce unemployment or restart America’s economic engine.