Obama’s “You Didn’t Build That” Comments–Campaign Turning Point?

President Barack Obama stirred up a hornet’s nest this week with his assertion that entrepreneurs didn’t build their businesses with their own effort. He has since tried to backpedal in the same way he did last month after inexplicably claiming that the private sector is doing fine.

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and other Republicans immediately seized on Obama’s anti-business comments as an example of the president’s ideological disdain for the free-enterprise system and individual initiative. In fact, many believe that this could be the turning point of the campaign, given that the election–barring the unforeseen–will  fundamentally be decided on economic issues.

Perhaps the most heartfelt response to Obama’s disparagement of entrepreneurs, however, comes from Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass.

Kass has spent his career exposing the corruption and shenanigans of the  Chicago and Illinois political machine, from where Obama began his elective career. Here is, in part, what Kass wrote:

When President Barack Obama hauled off and slapped American small-business owners in the mouth the other day, I wanted to dream of my father. But I didn’t have to close my eyes to see my dad. I could do it with my eyes open…

Day after day, decade after decade. Weekdays and weekends, no vacations, no time to see our games, no money for extras, not even for McDonald’s. My dad and Uncle George, and my mom and my late Aunt Mary, killing themselves in their small supermarket on the South Side of Chicago.

There was no federal bailout money for us. No Republican corporate welfare. No Democratic handouts. No bipartisan lobbyists working the angles. No Tony Rezkos. No offshore accounts. No Obama bucks…

Just two immigrant brothers and their families risking everything, balancing on the economic high wire, building a business in America. They sacrificed, paid their bills, counted pennies to pay rent and purchase health care and food and not much else. And for their troubles they were muscled by the politicos, by the city inspectors and the chiselers and the weasels, all those smiling extortionists who held the government hammer over all of our heads…

It’s the same story with so many other businesses in America, immigrants and native-born.

The entrepreneurs risk everything, their homes, their children’s college funds, their hearts, all for a chance at the dream: independence, and a small business of their own.

As previously written on The Inquisitr, even if you have low regard for the owner of the company that you work for,  or those who ran the businesses in your past career, and perhaps with good reason, the fact remains that small and medium businesses are the job creators in America.

Meddlesome government bureaucrats, red tape, high taxes, out-of-control government spending–all the things that Obama seems to support–none of that will put middle class Americans back to work. Just the opposite.

With his ultra-thin resume, the president himself has no experience in business and thus apparently has no concept of what’s like to either to manage a successful (or unsuccessful)  enterprise or what it takes to earn a paycheck in the private sector.  This is perhaps the source of his disconnect with business builders or job creators–those sometimes nasty people that hire the rest of us and give us raises if we perform.

NewsBusters’ Matthew Sheffield responds to the notion that the president’s remarks were taken out of context:

The full context hurts Obama even more so than the single sentence, in part because it shows that single sentence was not a verbal gaffe, but really how Obama thinks about business success: It isn’t something you earn or create, but something that government hands you.

Considering Obama’s sole experience in business is doling out stimulus money to ventures like Solyndra in which his cronies are heavily invested, it’s not surprising he thinks that’s how business operates.

Here is Florida Senator Marco Rubio commenting on Obama’s remarks:

Even if you are a fervent Obama supporter, does his recent comments give you any second thoughts as the economy continues to struggle and millions are without jobs?