An Antitrust Funeral OrationSo much for hopes of populism in a Republican House of Representatives.
Micah Meadowcroft
Feb 1, 2023
My fellow Americans, read this closely; I come to bury conservative antitrust, not to praise it. Reports of a new Republican Party have perhaps been overstated, once again; the dog returns to its vomit, especially when forced to govern. What might be done by a House judiciary subcommittee on “antitrust, commercial, and administrative law” can be killed and interred with a changed name and a new chairman. So let it be with this new House judiciary subcommittee, on “the administrative state, regulatory reform, and antitrust.”
The noble Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio has told us, in action if not in words, that bipartisan antitrust was ambitious; if it was so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously has the conservative effort to rein in Big Tech answered for it. Jordan tells us that Kentucky’s Representative Thomas Massie will be a better chair than Colorado’s Representative Ken Buck, for as the new subcommittee name makes clear, this Republican-led body will be focused on deregulation, and antitrust will be left in final place. So, here we are, in the Republican Congress of Jordan and Speaker Kevin McCarthy and all the rest—for Jordan is an honorable conservative; so are they all, all honorable conservatives—reflecting on the unfought House fight against Big Tech, at what amounts to Republican antitrust efforts’ funeral.
Antitrust was once a Republican issue, faithful and just to the causes of localism and regionalism, of self-rule and competition. Of course, consider President Theodore Roosevelt, a son of that Grand Old Party, buster of bad monopolies and mergers, and protector of good American trade and fair prices for American goods. Remember also that Senator John Sherman of the Sherman Act was a Lincoln Republican. And President Benjamin Harrison was a Republican, too, signing that first antitrust bill into law. But, as Rachel Bovard has written:
Too many on the right conflate antitrust enforcement with regulation, when the two are quite distinct. Antitrust is targeted law enforcement. It addresses specific acts of marketplace conduct that must be thoroughly investigated by the Department of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission, and proven before a judge, before the law is enforced.
Republicans today appear to have forgotten that it is things like anticompetitive behavior and cartel pricing that drive demand for government regulation—in a world where Meta did not own Instagram and WhatsApp, too, it would matter less how Facebook monitors and polices speech; in a world where Meta did not own Instagram and WhatsApp, Facebook would be less tempted to ask the federal government to set standards for its industry, to regulate out of existence any upstart competition.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/an-antitrust-funeral-oration/
