Having no recent experience in the United Kingdom, I cannot comment on developments there. I'll observe instead an interesting aspect of conservative Republican commentary on public affairs in recent years.

The Repulbican Party has always had a healthy respect for property, having been founded as part of a movement that distinguished clearly between property held illegitimately (i.e. Negro slaves) and all other kinds. From time to time in our history, respect has strayed into adoration, and understanding of the important economic role played by concentrations of private wealth into unmanly, fawning deference to individuals and corporate entities controlling such concentrations. This was a feature of Republican Party politics at the end of the 19th century, and also during the 1920s and '30s. Will Inboden's post here is a small token of how far into that territory present-day Republican politics have drifted.

The mechanics of permanent campaign politics, a powerful influence on Bush-era Republicans right across the board, clearly influence this drift. Opposing all taxes on anyone and anything at any time preserves for Republican candidates the message discipline so valuable during election campaigns; since upper-income Americans (and now, thanks to the Roberts Supreme Court, public corporations) are the most lucrative source of funding for the GOP's vast, permanent campaign infrastructure, fighting for lower taxes also helps ensure a steady flow of cash into the pockets of those who work on Republican campaigns. Eventually, some of this cash makes its way to Republican elected and appointed officials, after they retire from public life, and occasionally when they do tours to promote their ghostwritten memoirs.

The straighforward bargain in which Republicans accept large amounts of campaign cash in exchange for much larger amounts of tax revenue foregone doesn't explain everything, however. Men and women are not entirely rational actors; there is a strong element of emotional commitment behind many of their beliefs. Such appears to be the case here, and there is no reason to suspect insincerity on Inboden's part, or that of Paul Ryan, or of many other Republicans who often speak similarly. They do not see the "business community" -- in other words, the wealthy, and especially those among the wealthy well disposed toward Republicans -- as mere factors in the economy or in local communities. They are rather the founders of the feast, the sources of all jobs and growth, fit objects of adoration.

They are the masters, by virtue of having money; we are the servants, by virtue of needing money. One does not threaten, in public, one's master by presuming to suggest that he ought to pay higher taxes, or that he ought one day to be subjected to regulations promulgated to protect the public good. To do either, in the view of those we may call Inboden Republicans, is something between impudence and blasphemy. To a pure Inboden Republican, this actually falls a little down the list of Barack Obama's sins -- well below, for example, his failure to have been born a member of the Bush family. Among Republicans generally, though, there is a healthy outrage that the master class of the country should ever have been challenged, however tentatively and ineffectually, as they have been by Obama. Amidst all the squalor and corruption pervasive in the party, the force of this sincere outrage should not be underestimated.

Please consider in the future sparing us from your unoriginal musings on domestic economics. I would suggest that these only serve to cast doubt on the quality of your thinking on other issues.

The downgrade was a consequence of Obama's failure to "articulate a persuasive account of what drives economic growth"? Sheer nonsense. The downgrade was a clear consequence of congressional Republicans' mass refusal to consider tax increases relative to the current baseline, even in the context of much larger spending cuts.

You have previously railed against debt. Now you appear to be railing against taxes. You cannot have it both ways, the Bush/Warsh paean to growth as a solution notwithstanding.

Obama "seems to see the business community as an unfamiliar entity whose primary purpose is to generate revenues for the government, rather than an engine of job creation and improving living standards for American citizens"? Take a step back, Mr. Inboden, and consider how absurd this really is, though I readily acknowledge that this notion is widely parroted on the right.

It is perfectly right and proper that "commercial leaders," with their own narrow interests, should have differences with the government that is responsible for a broader set of interests.

And the particular regulation you reference in your link is a consequence -- as all regulations are -- of an act of congress. Obama repeatedly stated that his threshold in the health-care debate was a plan to provide coverage for all Americans that would be scored as deficit-neutral or better. The regulation you point to did not emerge from a specific administration initiative - it was mandated by congress without material input from the white house.