IT’S A FAIR COP:

Republican opponents of the auto bailout are being accused of putting ideology ahead of the economy’s well-being. They are accused of having an ideological animus against bailouts.

“That criticism pays Republicans a compliment they don’t deserve,” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “The Republican opposition to the auto bailout was not a matter of principle, but of pragmatic nit-picking.

“A principled opposition to the auto bailout would have denounced as immoral any attempt to use taxpayer money to prop up failing companies. It would have insisted that such attempts at central planning are destructive and un-American. It would have said that the government’s proper function is not to engineer the economy, but to protect individual rights and otherwise leave the economy free. That is not what the Republicans claimed. . . . The tragic fact is that Republicans do not regard central planning as objectionable–they merely disagree with the Democrats’ central plan.”

Sigh. Would the voters have bought the principled argument? Maybe — the polls show a lot of hostility to an auto bailout. Sadly, we’ll never know . . . .