Other than Ron Paul, who understands free markets and what liberty actually means, the Republican candidates have been vying with each other to see who can have the biggest police state or who can kill the most people. Now we see Newt Gingrich going after Mitt Romney because his firm, Bain Capital, actually practiced capitalism, which is anathema in Washington. (That only works when the government subsidizes “green energy” companies and other outfits that only can survive when taxpayers are forced to give them money they have not earned.)

Corporate raiders go after firms that are not in good shape, and they make money by selling off the assets of those firms. When a company is worth more having its assets sold in the open market than being a “whole” firm, that is not the fault of the corporate raider. Yes, people employed by those firms often lose their jobs, but they were going to lose their jobs anyway because the firm was in real trouble. (And, unlike General Motors, they did not have the political clout to be purchased effectively by the government. When GM went bankrupt, the firm as a whole had a negative value, and while it had some valuable assets, much of GM would have been sold for scrap metal had the free market process been permitted to work.)

While there is much to dislike about Mitt Romney (and, no, if he is the Republican nominee, I won’t vote for him), the whole notion that Bain Capital actually destroyed wealth via its actions is laughable. Most Americans don’t understand how this process works and from the attacks on Romney involving Bain, it is obvious that the Republican candidates — sans Ron Paul — also are as anti-capitalist as the Democrats.