In civics class we were taught a simple and punchy set of generalities to describe the Republican Party: ‘On economic issues they side with business and corporate interests, and on social issues they uphold conservative and traditional values.’
While we hurried to copy down our teacher’s points before she skipped to the next slide, we did not stop to think about the implications of that statement. Are these economic and social stances compatible? Can the GOP effectively espouse and impose conservative social policies while maintaining a tight relationship with big businesses? Perhaps these questions were not even worth asking years ago. After all, the interests of corporate America were justifiably centered on profit maximization and protecting shareholders, not silly culture war squabbles.
Not today.
We find the Republican Party at a crossroads. On one hand, enormous corporate political contributions still flow to Republicans. Our economic principles and monied interests overlap, resulting in a free market orientation of low taxes and deregulation. But on the other hand, our social values—at a time of a deep cultural divide—are under attack by the very interests we claim to align with.
This trend began in the 1990s, when mass media corporatized under vast conglomerates, and completed their quest to become Democratic Party operatives. Republican trust in the media eroded and now stands at an all-time low as a result. Republicans take pride in opposing the woke echo chamber of pop culture, academia, and the mainstream media. Party leaders lambast these institutions and the base cheers. It is a simple and effective rallying cry.
Republicans have essentially become desensitized to the fact that nearly every major cultural institution in this country has lurched far to the left. To put it another way, Republicans are bringing a knife to a gun fight—and relishing in their underdog status.
Will George Clooney and the faculty of Wellesley College ever come to their senses and convert to the Republican Party? Of course not. That is not the core issue of the leftist cultural trend.
The single largest threat to the Republican Party and its voters is the immense power that these fringe, shameless culture warriors wield in our lives.
It is not enough to tune out the partisan activists or the Twitter busy bodies when these interests possess the ability to make decisions for major institutions. In corporate America, the small but noisy far-left are realizing their outsized influence and using it accordingly.
We often move quickly from one headline to the next, but taken together, Republicans should be startled by the extent to which once apolitical institutions are waging war on conservatism.
Recently, a collective effort by cynical Democrats, activists, and the left-wing media to manipulate the public about Georgia’s new election law spurred grave consequences. Major League Baseball hastily pulled the all-star game from Atlanta, and Delta Airlines, Coca-Cola, and PayPal condemned Georgia Republicans with rhetoric borrowed from the most deceitful actors in the Democratic Party and the media.
It follows similar events in North Carolina after the state passed its transgender bathroom law. Or in Indiana when the state expanded religious freedom. Or numerous states when they passed pro-life heartbeat bills. Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota vetoed a ban on transgender athletes under pressure from the bullies at the NCAA. Radical left-wing social policies like partial birth abortion, unsurprisingly, do not catch the ire of woke corporate executives. These trends ought to alarm Republicans. Conservative social policies are consistently met with knee jerk opposition from corporate boards.
One must wonder how corporations that are fleeing their liberal utopias en masse to Florida and Texas would react to bold, conservative social legislation.
The prevailing wisdom of many conservative and libertarian-minded thinkers was to defer to these corporations as acting in their perceived financial interest. But a couple issues have arisen with this idea.
First, during the period in which social media erupts and the news media cover a controversy, corporations immediately take a side. From Black Lives Matter riots to numerous socially conservative state bills, to President Trump’s travel bans or border restrictions, corporations—almost in lockstep—line up to condemn what amount to basic right-wing policies. The instantaneousness by which corporations adopt Democratic talking points in response to political controversies stand at odds with the principle that businesses act in a responsible manner for their interests. They default to one side before ever gauging public opinion.
Second, many of these decisions by corporate boards stand in the minority in the public square. A recent Survey Monkey poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans would be less supportive of companies that wade into political debates. Another poll in 2017–during the corporate row over President Trump’s travel ban–showed 58 percent of consumers expressed dislike for marketers that talk politics. This included a plurality of millennials!
Once we come to terms with the fact that corporations do not take political stances for the sole purpose of pleasing the greatest amount of their customers, it becomes much simpler to understand their internal decisions.
Corporations have begun imposing anti-American critical race theory training and adopting racial and gender quotas. They have actively and vocally contributed to left-wing causes like abortion, censorship, illegal immigration, and gun control. They have canceled traditional names, figures, and brands with the woke intensity of a freshman sociology major. What gives?
There arise two opposing phenomena.
First, there are the companies focused on crisis de-escalation. They are feeble in outward posture and leftist by result. Chick-fil-a fits this bill. There was no solitary justification for ending their practice of donating to the Salvation Army. But in an attempt to please the unpleasable, they surrendered, rather than taking a moral stand. If leftists frame every issue as life and death or human rights or justice—see President Biden’s repulsive characterization of Georgia’s election bill as “Jim Crow on steroids”—while conservatives soberly debate it as public policy, the apolitical but invertebrate corporate executives will side with leftists every time. In their minds, it is the only way to put out a fire; a fire lit by the left.
The more common and dangerous phenomenon is CEO activism. Kevin Williamson wrote a compelling article for National Review, in which he laid out just how much of a bubble these elite few operate in. Half of Fortune 500 company CEOs come from ten elite universities. One-seventh of these were from Harvard alone. They can foist their worldview on the public by leveraging their own companies. It is not shareholders or customers who demand these practices—think Dick’s Sporting Goods ending the sale of guns or United Airlines imposing racial and gender quotas for their pilots—it is the leftist idealists running these corporations from the top.
Conservatives at major American corporations should not feel powerless to push back on this dangerous leftward trend. More than 40% of employee political contributions in the top 30 companies of the Fortune 500 go to Republicans. Nine of these companies are majority Republican, measured by contributions. Namely, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lockheed Martin, Exxon Mobil, and Delta Airlines.
Would avoiding politics altogether be the superior approach? Absolutely. In an ideal world, corporations accomplish their stated purpose rather than adopt political ideologies and worldviews. In 2021, employees of these companies, students at universities, and rank and file workers of government bureaucracies are learning that leftists operate under a totally different set of rules—if they have one at all. These once great corporations are paying the price.
And so, the question must be posed whether conservatives are slipping into an oxymoron in their economic and social views. In a more materialized sense, should conservatives vigorously support tax credits to lure companies that espouse toxic political beliefs to their cities or states? Should conservatives continue to oppose antitrust application against monopolies and oligopolies? Should trade policies be shaped to help the American worker or the corporate bottom line?
Some of these questions have already been answered. President Trump began the shift away from the morally indifferent, libertarian instinct of the GOP. His trade and immigration policies reflected staunch opposition to the prevailing interests of corporate executives and special interests. He levied vindictive and personal attacks against major American companies and their leaders, at times suggesting boycotts.
This awakening that Trump represented within the Republican Party is not a flash in the pan.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell recently excoriated corporations, in response to the MLB and Delta, and hinted at “serious consequences” if they turn into “a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country.” He since softened his tone, but the anger even within the Washington Republican establishment is palpable.
Senator Marco Rubio turned the dial up further in a tweet, exclaiming, “@MLB caves to pressure & moves draft & #AllStarGame out of Georgia on the same week they announce a deal with a company backed by the genocidal Communist Party of #China. Why are we still listening to these woke corporate hypocrites on taxes, regulations & antitrust?”
Georgia House Republicans seem to have listened to Senator Rubio. They swiftly shot back at Delta after its CEO characterized the election bill as eroding the right to vote, voting to erase a favorable tax credit for the company. The bill has yet to be taken up by the state Senate.
Republican Speaker of the Georgia House David Ralston astutely commented, “They like our public policy when we’re doing things that benefit them,” adding, “You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand. You got to keep that in mind sometimes.” He is wise to not have been bullied by the state’s corporate tycoons.
I, and other conservatives, have gradually come to the realization that in fighting big, bureaucratic government, we have taken our eye off the ball of the very real threat of corporatist leftism. Business and culture have become indistinguishable. In this new, hyper-political world social policy is set by agenda-driven woke capitalists.
It is past time conservatives stop sticking up for corporate interests while those same corporations actively fight against ours.
