‘08 rhetoric alarms chamber
WASHINGTON – Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business.
“We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed,” chamber President Tom Donohue said.
The warning from the nation’s largest trade association came against a background of mounting popular concern over the condition of the economy. A weak record of job creation, the subprime mortgage crisis, declining home values and other problems have helped make the economy a major campaign issue.
Presidential candidates in particular have responded to the public concern. Former Sen. John Edwards, of North Carolina, has been the bluntest populist voice, but other front-running Democrats, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, of New York, and Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois, also have called for change on behalf of middle-class voters.
On the Republican side, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – emerging as an unexpected front-runner after winning the Iowa caucuses – has used populist themes in his effort to woo independent voters, blasting bonus pay for corporate CEOs and the effect of unfettered globalization on workers.
Reacting to what it sees as a potentially hostile political climate, Donohue said, the chamber will seek to punish candidates who target business interests with their rhetoric or policy proposals, including congressional and state-level candidates.
Although Donohue shied away from precise figures, he indicated that his organization will spend in excess of the approximately $60 million it spent in the last presidential cycle. That approaches the spending levels planned by the largest labor unions.
The chamber president is scheduled to announce the broad outlines of the organization’s plans for the 2008 election and beyond at a news conference here today.
“I’m concerned about anti-corporate and populist rhetoric from candidates for the presidency, members of Congress and the media,” he said. “It suggests to us that we have to demonstrate who it is in this society that creates jobs, wealth and benefits – and who it is that eats them.”