News/Commentary

WaPo columnist who slammed Harris over ‘communist’ price controls walks it back

August 17, 2024 | | Print Article

A Washington Post columnist who went rogue with her sharp criticism of Kamala Harris’s economic proposals has been reigned in and is now back on message.

Catherine Rampell broke party ranks with a brutally honest piece about the centerpiece of the Democrat nominee’s policy, the imposition of price controls that would be enforced by federal bureaucrats in the form of a ban on “price gouging” that many suggested was a lot like communism.

Rampell herself used the C-word in her column titled, “When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?” in which she stated, “It’s hard to exaggerate how bad Kamala Harris’s price-gouging proposal is.”

“If your opponent claims you’re a ‘communist,’ maybe don’t start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be labeled as federal price controls,” she wrote.

She also went on CNN on Friday and dropped another bomb on the Harris economic agenda, pointing out that price controls have only brought misery where they’ve been implemented.

“We’ve seen this kind of thing tried in lots of other countries before – Venezuela, Argentina, the Soviet Union, et cetera – it leads to shortages, it leads to black markets, plenty of uncertainty,” she said.

But by later in the day, the Democrat toady walked back her criticism of Harris, doing a complete 180, and is now praising the queen of “Kamalot” only days before she’s formally crowned in Chicago.

“Yes there was still some silliness in her speech, but her comments on prices were more toned down than campaign factsheet sent to reporters (punishing companies that raise prices above their costs etc). A generic call to increase antitrust enforcement is fine and I support it,” Rampell wrote, lining up behind the same communism that she had previously ripped.

She was against it before she was for it, and got a solid pelting from X users over her reversal with plenty of stones being thrown by leftist supporters of Harris.

“It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is. It is, in all but name, a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food. Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would.” Rampell wrote in her piece.

Chris Donaldson
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