It's pretty silly to suggest that the GOP is an enemy of small to medium businesses, since to a demographic first approximation, virtually every small-medium business owner is a Republican.
The CoC is shady, like you said. And it supports the GOP. It is not itself the GOP.
While I agree the CoC is not the GOP, it certainly heavily leans that way in practice and in policy. There are notable exceptions.
"It's pretty silly to suggest that the GOP is an enemy of small to medium businesses"
This I disagree with though. To me, having spent most of my time in GOP owned areas, my conclusion is that the GOP parades small/medium business values to their support base, but when it really comes down to someone writing legislation on K-street, it almost always favors the megacorps. The GOP is, indeed, in my mind at least, anti small/med business, but they sell themselves otherwise.
GOP tax policy strongly favors small business owners. They support lower rates across the board, and in particular disfavor the Democratic party's policy of boosting revenue with increased taxes on higher brackets (business owners are disproportionately in the highest marginal bracket). The GOP also wants to eliminate the AMT, and retain the mortgage interest tax deduction.
GOP health care policy strongly favors small business owners. For instance, the GOP opposes the employer health care mandate.
The GOP's stance on regulations strongly favors small business owners: they disfavor them pretty much across the board. On a message board, it may seem like environmental regulations matter primarily to giant extractive industry companies, but most industrial businesses in the US are small businesses.
I'd be interested in some specific examples of policies the GOP supports that the Democrats don't support that aren't beneficial to small businesses.
Two caveats:
* I'm a Democrat. "Do what's best for the public school system shalt be the whole of the law" is roughly what I believe.
* The calculus is different if by "small business" you really (perhaps accidentally) mean "small tech company".
> I'd be interested in some specific examples of policies the GOP supports that the Democrats don't support that aren't beneficial to small businesses.
I suppose this is more of an example of a policy that they oppose, but some kind of healthcare reform to produce a working insurance market for individual and small-time purchasers (i.e. not big corporations buying group plans) comes to mind as something that benefits small businesspeople. Interestingly the U.S. Chamber of Commerce did support Hillarycare in the '90s, but changed its mind later.
Maybe we have different definitions of small businessperson, but I also don't know any (across several industries) who make the $400k+ post-deductions needed to be in the top marginal tax bracket. Not only in tech, but also in traditional small-business areas like dry-cleaning, the restaurant business, repair shops, or small-scale retail, only the most successful owners clear anything near that. What definition of small businessperson has most small businesspeople being in this bracket?
> GOP health care policy strongly favors small business owners.
Most small business owners that I know would prefer single-payer health care to avoid the distraction of employer-sponsored coverage. Also, the people I've known who have expressed interest in quitting their jobs to start their own business cite health care as one of the main reasons for why they've been unwilling to pull the trigger, and this is especially true for those who have children. But the people I know may not represent the majority of small business owners.
I agree with you, and have been tooting the horn about health care and entrepreneurship on HN for years, but most American small business owners hate the employee mandate and don't favor single-payer.
That just doesn't match reality. If anyone is helping small business owners, they're a colossal failure. The whole 99% thing. We can agree they some folks want to appear to be helping small business owners.
The CoC is shady, like you said. And it supports the GOP. It is not itself the GOP.