Free the Markets Lawrence's Lessig's column in Wired magazine is spot-on this month:

The GOP (at least, as it was rising to dominate American politics) defined its ideals as pro-market policies that promote competition and efficiency. Yet increasingly, the party - as conservative columnist Bruce Bartlett says of George Bush in his book, Impostor - is "incapable of telling the difference between being pro-business and being for the free market." It favors specific competitors rather than favoring competition.

Free markets aren't pro-business - they don't favor incumbent companies if upstarts do the job better. Competition is good wherever it comes from - even the government - so long as it lowers social costs and increases wealth. And efficiency is good regardless of who it might hurt; it is especially good if it hurts those who feed off inefficiency.

If you are a true believer in free market economics, today's GOP is not your party.  It wants to restrict the natural flow of labor, proposing a walled-off, militarized border.  It wants to make government contracts no-bid, giving the big bucks to friends of the administration without asking them to prove how their companies can effectively and efficiently get the job done.  And as Lessig demonstrates above, it wants put in place an economic system that stymies innovation and up-start competion to the tired old economic dinosaurs that fund its campaigns.
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