<http://www.spectator.org/archives/0103TAS/glassman0103.htm>
The American Spectator -- March 2001
Smart Nerds, Foolish Choices
Why Silicon Valley votes against its interests
by James K. Glassman
One of the deepest mysteries of this New Age is why Silicon Valley --
as a geographic metaphor for smart, productive high-technologists
around the country--prefers Democrats to Republicans. In the
presidential election, for example, voters in the two counties in the
peninsula south of San Francisco--Santa Mateo and Santa Clara -- chose
Al Gore over George W. Bush, 63 percent to 32 percent, with 4 percent
for Ralph Nader.
Republicans have given far more support to the issues that high-tech
executives say are dear to them: expanding visas for skilled
immigrants, giving China the same trade status as other countries,
limiting the power of trial lawyers to blackmail technology companies
for damages over Y2K software failures and practically anything else.
"If you look at all these issues," says Rep. Dick Armey, "Republicans
are their friends."
So what's the problem? Rick White--the former Republican congressman
for the Washington state district that includes Redmond, home of
Microsoft -- told me that shortly after the GOP sweep in 1994, Bill
Gates sat down with Newt Gingrich. "Why don't more high-tech execs
support us?" the new speaker asked. "We are the party of
entrepreneurial values."
Gates replied: "We do agree on business and economic issues, but we
have hesitation on social issues."
A few years later, when Bill Clinton's Justice Department went after
Microsoft on antitrust charges, Gates learned that, for a high-tech
CEO, business issues trump social issues. But most of his colleagues
haven't absorbed that lesson yet.
Last year, Armey, the House majority leader, went to Silicon Valley to
drum up support for his "e-contract"--a set of bills to help tech
firms, including setting a standard for digital signatures and keeping
a moratorium on new Internet taxes. Armey spoke for half an hour, then
invited questions from the floor. The tech executives ignored the
substance of his talk and instead asked questions that might have come
from a gathering of the Urban League or the National Organization for
Women. The final question to a flabbergasted Armey: "Why is it that
you Republicans are so obsessed about abortion?"
Why is Silicon Valley oblivious to the policy concerns that can shape
the economy and their own businesses? "My explanation for it," Armey
told me, "is that they have prospered for all these years, independent
of government and indifferent to it.... They came at politics from a
personal point of view. Then, all of a sudden, things changed, and
they didn't seem to be able to make the transition from the politics
of the heart to the politics of the brain."
In other words, the opposition to Republicans appears almost
aesthetic. Yes, Democrats may have tastes that fit better with Silicon
Valley lifestyles. Democrats and Valley technologists may like the
same music, drink the same latte, drive the same model of Volvo. But
they don't share Silicon Valley's ideas about the New Economy. In the
end, Democrats want to run your business. They are on the side of
higher taxes, more regulation, more lawsuits. It is snobbish and
shortsighted for Silicon Valley technologists and entrepreneurs to
shun a party that shares their free-market values but, perhaps, not
their styles and tastes.
[...]
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