"Real Conservatives Oppose NAFTA" (Teabaggers vs. corporate repubs?)

[pampango]

http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/commentary-mainmenu-43/7800-real-conservatives-oppose-nafta

Opposition to free trade agreements, while a minority view in today’s internationalist-oriented Republican Party, is in all actuality a robust and important part of the history of the GOP. Robert Lighthizer, a trade representative in the Reagan administration, rightfully argues that free trade agreements were a long-standing policy of leftists, including Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton (who led the push for America’s entry into NAFTA in 1993), and Barack Obama. Lighthizer also says that those considered to be America’s leading conservatives, including former Senator Jesse Helms (R-.N.C.), former Senator Robert Taft (R-Ohio), Alexander Hamilton (one of our nation’s Founding Fathers), and even former President Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote that “pernicious indulgence in the doctrine of free trade seems inevitably to produce fatty degeneration of the moral fiber.” In fact, the first vocal Republican in support of free trade was Dwight Eisenhower, who was vociferously opposed by conservatives, including supporters of Robert Taft and the then-nascent John Birch Society (Robert Welch‘s damning investigation, The Politician, discussed much of Eisenhower‘s leftist tendencies).

Yet, Reagan was certainly not the first Republican President to espouse “protectionist” sensibilities. Calvin Coolidge, who was one of the most constitutionalist Presidents in American history, clearly understood the need to defend American industry by blocking free trade policies. In his Second Annual Message of December 3, 1924, Coolidge famously declared that “the protective tariff enables our people to live according to a better standard and receive a better rate of compensation than any people, any time, anywhere on earth, ever enjoyed.” In a similar vein, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 is yet another example of Republican integrity on the issue of free trade; the tariff sought to protect American agriculture and industry, and in spite of criticisms that it worsened the effects of the Great Depression, monetarists such as Milton Friedman argue that this Americanist economic measure actually helped mitigate the effects of the Depression.

While the effort to repeal NAFTA clearly has strong historical and ideological precedent within the Republican Party (evident also in the fact that 43 House Republicans voted against NAFTA in 1993), it is unclear whether the current Republican Congress will support H.R. 4759, despite the fact that many Tea Partiers bemoan the consequences of free trade. In a recent poll put out by the Mellman Group and the Alliance for American Manufacturing, 74 percent of self-described Tea Party supporters would support a "national manufacturing strategy to make sure that economic, tax, labor, and trade policies in this country work together to help support manufacturing in the United States." Likewise, 56 percent of self-described Tea Party supporters "favor a tariff on products imported from other countries that are cheaper because they came from a country that does not have to comply with any climate change regulations in the country where the products were made." These sentiments are inspired by both the ill-effects of free trade on American manufacturing and the desire to preserve national sovereignty, which is a key reason to defeat NAFTA, since it is under the pretext of this free-trade agreement that plans for the North American Union and the NAFTA superhighway are secretly being moved forward.

The GOP would be wise to return to its roots as an anti-free trade agreement, economically-nationalistic party that upholds national sovereignty, prosperity, national defense capabilities, and enhanced opportunity for the American middle class, and with a burgeoning protectionist stream within the Tea Party movement and an out-of-control immigration problem rallying the conservative base, now is the time to repeal NAFTA.

The fight between the populist base full of teabaggers and the corporate wing of the repub party seems to be as intense as ever.

The author is apparently a tea party member and a libertarian according to his facebook page.