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The Republican/Big Business Divorce
Last week, I posted a Tweet from Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (a.k.a., Frank Luntz’s roommate) in which he excoriated big business. “If Corporate America thinks jumping on the bandwagon after Tuesday’s election and before the impending red wave will make conservatives forget the role they played in subjecting the U.S. to open borders and runaway inflation, they are sorely mistaken.” I received it with the same skepticism I treat a Democrat president who shows up to church only on election years when there’s press around, or Oprah when she used to go on diets.
On the other hand, this widely circulated opinion piece (It’s been in the Washington Post, The Guardian, Business Insider, and a lot of other outlets) posits that “Big Business Can’t Rely on Republicans Anymore.”
The conflict between big business and the GOP has spilled into the open. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s most powerful pro-business lobbying organization, has been a close and crucial Republican ally seemingly forever. So it came as a shock when the chamber backed 23 freshman House Democrats in the 2020 elections.
In its pre-populist era, Republicans might have tried to mend fences. Not this time. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s response was to declare, “I don’t want the U.S. Chamber’s endorsement because they have sold out.” Six months later, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a potential 2024 presidential candidate, called the chamber “a front service for woke corporations.”
Last month, House Republican leaders kicked the chamber off their strategy calls about the Democrats’ climate and social-spending package, dubbed the Build Back Better bill, despite their shared opposition to the legislation. This self-destructive tantrum on the part of GOP leaders came after the chamber criticized some House Republicans for not publicly supporting the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the House on Nov. 5. “I didn’t even know the chamber was around anymore,” Mr. McCarthy sneered.
Here’s the TL;DR version.
- The US Chamber of Commerce, which represents big corporations, began backing Democrats instead of Republicans (ostensibly) because Trump was pro-tariffs, anti-cheap illegal immigrant labor, and thought it would be pretty great to manufacture things in America instead of China. (Also, he said mean things that hurt people’s feelers.)
- Now, Republicans are telling the Chamber of Commerce to pound sand. The Republican base doesn’t trust big business, and Big Tech’s open embrace of Democrat politics hasn’t one them many friends among elected Republicans. (Their paid-off lackeys at the Bulwark, Dispatch, et cetera, are another matter.)
- The Chamber of Commerce is a weakened force in politics. It’s been abandoned by some of its biggest donors and has a lot less money to throw around influencing elections than, say, left-wing dark money PACs like the 1630 Fund. And the Democrats they gave their money to are still basically socialists who hate business.
The author makes clear his political leanings — repeating the slander about Trump and Charlottesville, and soft-pedaling the big business embrace of woke, far-left politics as “adopting the aesthetics of the left’s cultural agenda.” It’s not “aesthetic” when corporations are forcing racialist indoctrination on their employees, using former entertainment events as platforms for left-aligned political messaging, and giving billions of dollars to far-left organizations. These are not mere aesthetic choices, these actions reflect core values. Decades of unchecked left-wing indoctrination in business schools and Marxist activism has simply found its way into the boardroom. (And into the leadership of the CoC as well.)
I don’t know whether the Republican – Big Business split is for real or just a matter of optics. I suspect the latter. Whether the issue has been illegal immigration, exporting working-class prosperity to China, or signing off on bloated “infrastructure” bills that offer billions in kickbacks to connected cronies, the GOP, especially under the Bush Family, has always been a reliable lapdog for corporate interests. Any long-time observer would be justified in suspecting that this recent public separation is all for show, and GOP leaders are pitching something different to corporate leaders in private.
Double like for the meme.
The Oligarchs are trying to destroy small business, thus forcing the GOP and DNC to chose between the two. The DNC has chosen the Oligarchs, so the GOP *should* choose small business, but there is lots of money and power in aligning with the Oligarchs.
The Left has been beating on boardrooms for decades, deriding them for their maleness, their whiteness, their lack of diversity. It worked and tilted boards expectedly Left. This criticism moved to the executive suite and soon personnel became “human resources” with diversity agendas. Women and people of color fit nicely into these new spots, creating that magic diversity that would appease the critics, except, these new people had an agenda. Diversity was not enough. Next came penance and even expulsion for prior sins, then re-education for improper thoughts, then anti-racism (actually, self-hatred.) The transformation of Corporate America was complete!
NO, they are just beginning the process. It is hard to imagine how much farther progressive they will go, but go they will!
Elected Republicans always think, “If I just give them what they want, the temper tantrum will stop.”
No, it won’t. :-)
In some ways, it’s just human nature. Parents learn this quickly. “My child wants this doll for Christmas. I will get her the doll because it will make her happy.”
But as soon as the child has the doll, the child wants the next Thing to go with it. And the next Thing after that.
Human beings are born in a state of chronically wanting things. We might as well just leave each other wanting the Thing because it doesn’t do any good to supply the Thing. Yes, happiness will follow, but only for a second or so.
I am sure this is the tap root of the ambition and inspiration tree, which is good.
But we would be very smart and thrifty to recognize that wanting something is a chronic condition that we can never cure. :-)
Many of big business swore off providing financial support for the 147 Republicans who voted against counting my vote in Arizona. There has been some backsliding, such as with Toyota.
LOL, Of course this was the primary motivating factor for the all of those corporations to instantly turn their allegiance to the Libs.
If only all the world could be so simple to explain.
I’m skeptical whether the Republicans and Kevin McCarthy are sincere, too. I’d like to know how they will prove their disillusionment to us. I’m waiting . . . words are cheap.
Your first vote was fine. What we hate is that second vote. Biden may have been credited with the win in AZ, to which you contributed, but the audit did little to support that win. It pointed to significant issues with the vote, anomalies that could not be adjudicated, all that bent in favor of Biden. Hopefully these issues will be dealt with in future elections and accountability systems enhanced and corrected.
Unfortunately Biden was the PJ candidate and has been the PJ president. He should still stay home in his PJs. Every time he puts on a shirt and tie and tries to govern, the country gets kicked in the kidneys.
You hoped for a do-nothing moderate President. You got a “what do I do?” president who gets ice cream when he’s a good boy.
If Kevin thinks I’m going to forget the roll the Republican Party has played in subjecting the U.S. to open borders and runaway inflation, he is sorely mistaken.
Did you vote illegally? Because I don’t know any Republicans opposed to counting the votes of those who legally voted.
Your Democrat is showing again.
I am confused by this thread. From the appearance of it, it looks like @gary is attributed with stating “forget the role they played in subjecting the U.S. to open borders and runaway inflation, they are sorely mistaken.” But i don’t see that comment from Gary. Was it edited away? It seems like this was your comment @Kozak.
It’s not open to Cubans wanting to escape. Just to the people Biden likes.
I find Gary’s constant bellyaching about the election befuddling. The man he wanted to be president – as expressed by his vote – is president. The president is enacting the set of policies in terms of spending, immigration, taxation, climate change, education, and so forth – that Gary voted for. He should be delighted with the outcome of this election, but he doesn’t seem very happy at all.
If you highlight
abortiona portion of comment from comment A and hit reply on comment B, it attributes the selection from A to the author of B.IIRC, he is whining about not having a chance to vote against Trump in an AZ primary.
Very well put — accurate and concise.
This could not of happened if the Progs didn’t use big edu and the Ivey league schools as Farm teams. This really is the root of Prog Gov and Prog Board Room.
Mc Carthy has been a long time squish, but I think he has read the political tea leaves and determined it’s time to get on the America First train whether that means Trump is at the helm or not.
I read somewhere something to the effect that the genius of the American system is not necessarily electing the right people, but making it in the best interest of the elected people to do the right things.
It’s not a woke thing, it’s (was) an iron triangle thing. The perception of the U.S. Chamber among even GOP elected officials:
That was from 2019, following three years of animus between the organization and President Donald Trump, going back to the primaries. The Chamber’s former leader, Tom Donohue, built their influence on free trade and open borders. Trump’s campaign in the primary and general election in 2016 criticized those policies. This didn’t sit too well with the US Chamber folk who publicly proclaimed Donald Trump knew nothing about trade.
Think about that: they’re a business advocacy organization, and they, very early on, claim an opposition role to a candidacy that represented a more pro-business position than any administration at least since Reagan, and in some ways maybe the most pro-business in nearly a century. I’m sure Donohue saw Trump as a threat to the Chamber’s influence. By 2016, the US Chamber’s main clients were no longer the hundreds of local chambers still paying dues, but companies like Microsoft who claimed leftist sensibilities (open borders) that happened to jibe with the Chamber’s advocacy.
So, there’s a double pinch of pressure on the US Chamber’s decision making: a pro-business President opposed to their policies, and a client base whose biggest members opposed that President. The Chamber, sort of to its credit, didn’t think twice and loudly echoed its big business influencers, at the expense of any pretense of advocacy or adherence to main street businesses. In one statement, Donohue indicated that bringing jobs home wasn’t a desirable goal.
Donohue threw his influence away. He was backed into a corner and chose the wrong escape plan. Why? Some of it was probably personal. How could it not be when he spent years and years building the US Chambers influence, only to see it rebuked by the nomination and election of Donald Trump.
Endorse from any Chamber of Commerce, local or national, has be a major downcheck for me for a decade or so.
We are decades past the time when “what is good for General Motors is good for America”.
It is actually a blessing in disguise that big business is openly pushing woke stuff to nauseate right wingers enough to leave. Right wingers have pushed a myopic project of turning America into a giant shopping mall. Corporate America has largely not cared for America for a very long time. The first sign should have been them stripping this country of its manufacturing base and giving it to the Chinese. And dumb Republicans went around telling the small dispossessed people who live in towns now in mini depressions full of drugs, divorce, and dependency that it is great. You are getting cheaper crap at Wal Mart they were told.
Well, if it is great corporate America stripped our heavy industry out of the country what other industries should we strip and send overseas? Maybe we can send Disneyland to Australia, Silicon Valley to Cambodia, Hollywood to Singapore, and Wall Street to Vietnam. Great for America! We can make and do nothing and hand it off to the rest of the world. All that matters is America isn’t a country with any kind of culture. Let’s just strip it all down for parts and be a global economic zone for tourism and endless ungrateful immigrants. And have an elite governing crowd that only cares about international issues like climate change, border security in the Middle East, pushing hormone treatments for kids in Pakistan, and doesn’t remotely care about the American people or the homeland. The future! What a disaster. Good riddance to this sick relationship and all the damage it has done.
Now maybe Republicans can fight for the people of this country and not soulless entities that have no roots and no loyalty.
I did not say what you are quoting me to have said. Please delete this misattributed quote.
What I wanted was for Trump to be defeated. Given Trump’s Big Lie that he won, and his role in the Capitol Riot, I am secure in that. Biden is wrong on all the issues except one; Biden isn’t willing to destroy the Constitution to stay in power. Nominate a Republican who fully supports the Constitution, and won’t destroy the Constitution to stay in power and I am with you 100%.
Can you stop with this outrage over an interface glitch?
Apparently a glitch in the code. Your comment I meant to quote @garyrobbins
My responce
Did you vote illegally? Because I don’t know any Republicans opposed to counting the votes of those who legally voted.
Your Democrat is showing again.
Happy now?
Next allegation
And if America has to be destroyed in order for Trump to be destroyed, that’s just the price of doing business!
Biden also ignores court rulings on his vaccination mandate, telling the country to ignore the court rulings and continue along the stated path. I don’t remember Trump doing that sort of thing. Biden isn’t trying to “destroy” the constitution, but rather ignore it, rendering it an interesting historical artifact.