Conservatives need to wake up to the threat of big business

The GOP should take a note from the left and get on the anti-trust train

A box falling on a man.
(Image credit: Illustrated | ChrisGorgio/iStock, elenabs/iStock, Aerial3/iStock, Wikimedia Commons)

Conservatives want small government. Progressives distrust corporate control and influence. Both want to remake the world, but only one side has put forward any kind of coherent agenda that addresses one of the root causes of alienation among ordinary Americans — and it's not conservatives.

Over the past four years, Americans have made their distrust in institutions and the traditional governing class crystal clear. In the 2016 presidential campaign, Republicans fielded their most crowded and perhaps most talented primary candidates in decades, and yet the outsider iconoclast Donald Trump steamrolled over every one of them. Senate backbencher and avowed socialist Bernie Sanders nearly derailed Hillary Clinton's bid for the nomination, a warning sign that the establishment had worn out its welcome in both parties. President Trump's eventual win left conservatives shell-shocked. But voters embraced him for a reason: They felt powerless and impotent against a governing class that had stopped listening to them.

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Edward Morrissey

Edward Morrissey has been writing about politics since 2003 in his blog, Captain's Quarters, and now writes for HotAir.com. His columns have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Post, The New York Sun, the Washington Times, and other newspapers. Morrissey has a daily Internet talk show on politics and culture at Hot Air. Since 2004, Morrissey has had a weekend talk radio show in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and often fills in as a guest on Salem Radio Network's nationally-syndicated shows. He lives in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota with his wife, son and daughter-in-law, and his two granddaughters. Morrissey's new book, GOING RED, will be published by Crown Forum on April 5, 2016.