Republicans always say they’re the champions of the small businessman. You know, the regular Joe who decides, in the best and most noble tradition of entrepreneurship, to bet all he has and start a business. Pure American capitalism at work, admirable for its courage and for the fact that it employs people and helps local and national economies.

The problem is, that whole attitude is a sham.

Not the part about small businesses–that’s very much true. It’s the Republican attitude that’s a sham.

Take, for example, the goings-on of the past week and a half. Republicans want to extend Bush’s tax cuts–all of them, especially those for the wealthy–but the rationale they put forward is that it’s all about small businesses. From July 14:

Senate Republicans on Wednesday pressed Democrats to extend all the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush, arguing the party’s plan to let the breaks expire will hurt small businesses. …

Republicans said ending tax cuts for the wealthy would dry up the funds of small-business owners and make it harder for them to expand their operations. Grassley warned there would be political consequences for allowing tax cuts aimed at the wealthy to expire.

Get that? The GOP is not behind these tax cuts because they want to give massive amounts of money to people who already have massive amounts of money. It’s small businesses which are the real focus of their work.

Now, keep in mind that these tax cuts, if extended, would cost more than a trillion dollars over the next ten years, and Republicans are not putting forth any way to pay for the cuts. And remember, it’s the small business aspect which is a key point.

Fast-forward one week:

Perhaps the last best hope of Democrats to pass legislation aimed at creating jobs before the November elections seemed to be crumbling in the Senate on Wednesday as Republicans signaled that they would block a bill to expand government lending programs and grant an array of tax breaks to small businesses. …

Democrats were harsh in their criticism of Republicans who held up the unemployment money by refusing to vote for it unless some way was found to keep the costs from being added to the deficit.

So, the Republicans are eager to spend more than $1 trillion, unpaid for up front, going straight to the deficit… but they don’t want to spend $30 billion directly on tax breaks and loans to small businesses unless it is paid for, up front, and not added directly to the deficit.

Like I said, the whole small business thing is an unabashed sham. They don’t give a flying frack about small businesses. They use small businesses as a front whenever they want to give something excessive to the rich, saying that if they don’t get what they want, small businesses will suffer. Similarly, if Democrats want to do something they don’t like, such as raising the minimum wage or strengthening regulations–even when small businesses are made exempt–Republicans trot out small business owners and try to claim they will be hammered by those nasty Democrats and their anti-regular-American-small-businessman ways.

Whenever you hear a right-winger say anything about “small businesses,” let that be a red flag, make it set off your BS detector, and look closely–you’ll almost certainly see a boon to rich people and corporations thinly disguised behind the suckered sap they have gulled up to the press conference podium to stand in as the face of small businessmen.

It is identical to the lie about Republicans being pro-military and the liberals being against the troops. The Republicans are pro-military contractor, and are military hawks (who more often dodged service themselves), while it’s the Dems who are always sticking up for the men and women serving their country. But that doesn’t stop GOP pols from standing in front of the troops or using them as human shields for political purposes.

In the end, when the GOP gets its way, the soldiery gets screwed. Same goes for small businesses, who suffer when the large corporations which the GOP really cares about are allowed to mow them down.

Fortunately, two–though only two–Republicans crossed the lines and voted against their party and with the Democrats to give that aid to small businesses. And, at least for the moment, it seems that the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year are still set to expire.

After crusading to end unemployment benefits, apologizing to BP, trying to extend tax cuts to the wealthy that failed to help the economy, and so many other things that were sops to the rich and sucker-punches to regular Americans, anyone who votes Republican this year believing that will help anyone but the rich and the powerful is, and forgive me if this means you, not thinking straight. But a lot of people do see that fact, and still vote Republican, and often do so because they have bought into the trickle-down fantasy that somehow helping these big businesses will eventually help the little guy. Or else they believe that it’s wrong to tax those who are wealthy and use that money to support those in need, because that would be parasitic–as if the wealthy are not parasitic on everyone else, or as if just that one form of parasitism is acceptable.