Defending defending America: Obama's NLRB v. Boeing

Defending defending America: Obama's NLRB v. Boeing Hugh Hewitt Columnists Washington Examiner By: Hugh Hewitt

It would be very useful if the Department of Defense were to provide the American public with a list of the manufacturers of the hundreds of different systems that played into the killing of Osama bin Laden last week.

Boeing Co. is almost certainly on that list since it is the third-largest defense contractor in America.

It makes a variety of rotorcraft, surveillance vehicles and a host of other lethal products that help make the American military the most feared and capable military in history. We don't know which company makes the secret helicopters used in the assault on bin Laden's compound, but we do know, as my fellow radio host Mark Levin noted last week, those choppers didn't get procured and deployed since January 2009.

The long arm of the American military and its CIA partners depends on technology and training that took years and years to produce. President Obama is directing missions using expertise and assets left behind by his predecessor.

Will Obama's successor in 2013? (Oh, if you doubt that, read Jay Cost on the "Food Stamp Recovery" in The Weekly Standard or the Sith Lord Rove on the map of the Electoral College from Thursday's Wall Street Journal.)

As Americans toast SEAL Team 6 and its Army pilots and vast support network, the GOP's would-be nominees should be pointing to the Pentagon that ordered and produced the tools used in the mission, and defending its budget as the president tries to find deep cuts there that will spare his favored constituencies painful reductions in government largess.

Part of that argument ought to be a vigorous defense of Boeing, now in the cross hairs of the president's Alinskyite appointees at the National Labor Relations Board.

During the first Republican presidential debate, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty brought up the NLRB's attack on Boeing's plans to build airplanes in South Carolina and the home state crowd loved it.

So will independents and defense-minded Democratic voters across the country stunned by another rise in unemployment and by Obama's relentless war on the private sector.

Boeing's new South Carolina plant is for assembly of the 787 Dreamliner, not a military aircraft, but an attack on one part of that vast company is an attack on all of it, and Obama's hard-left appointees to the NLRB are indeed attacking.

Boeing is fighting back, noting that "Boeing's decision to place the second 787 assembly line in North Charleston was based upon a number of factors, including a favorable business environment in South Carolina for manufacturing companies like Boeing; significant financial incentives from the state of South Carolina; achieving geographic diversity of its commercial-airline operations; as well as to protect the stability of the 787's global production system."

South Carolina's congressional delegation is also fully in the fray.

Pawlenty's deft decision to make the pro-Boeing argument -- on stage at a forum for GOP presidential candidates Thursday night -- demonstrated a keen ear for the news that will drive the election cycle, and set an example for the other top-tier GOP candidates.

Obama's attack on Boeing's decision to create great jobs in a red state, even when the manufacturer is one of America's great defense contractors, is a huge issue that needs to be used by GOP candidates up and down the ticket to define the president and his agenda.

Obama may have ordered the attack on bin Laden, but he has also ordered an attack on American manufacturing and defense, and especially on the freedom of businesses to build and expand where they want to.

Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/05/defending-defending-america-obamas-nlrb-v-boeing#ixzz1MWj0LNKD