George Lakoff’s “Moral Politics” has some age on it now. Published in 1996, the work sought to explain, well, “How Liberals and Conservatives Think.” The operative metaphor Lakoff uses to explain their different life and policy choices derives from child-rearing. Liberals are nuturant parents. Conservatives are strict fathers whose authority kids learn not to challenge. The rest follows.
Lakoff’s metaphor has some wear and tear since 1996. But the struggle of minds between the Biden administration and the Republican Party is an almost textbook illustration. Biden says Yes to what the country wants. Republicans say No.
Trumpism has stripped away conservatism’s veneer of morality and patriotism leaving naught but the will to power. And, hoo-boy, having their power challenged really brings out the authoritarian in Republicans.
How derring-do entrepreneurs running major corporations with whom Republicans reflexively side disapprove of the GOP clamping down on the voting access of uppity non-Republicans? How dare corporation use free speech Republicans defend when it comes in the form of cash donations to condemn antidemocratic Republican legislation? Why, that’s biting the hands that feed them tax breaks!
In recent days, GOP leaders have encouraged boycotts against a group of companies that have condemned or pulled business from states that have passed more restrictive voting laws. The appetite for punitive measures hasn’t ended there. Republicans are also encouraging state and federal officials to utilize the tax code as a means of hitting back at, what they deem to be, “woke capitalism.” And they’re targeting some of the most iconic American brands — from Delta and Coca Cola to Major League Baseball — in the process.
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The increasingly aggressive pushback against politically outspoken companies is the latest, and perhaps purest, illustration of a party at a philosophical crossroads. Republicans spent decades aligning themselves with the business community and its preferences for lower taxes and fewer regulations. During the 2017 GOP tax reform push, the party slashed the corporate rate from 35 to 21 percent. In return, they have been bolstered with industry money and political support. Now, however, they’re betting that they can win on a backlash to the idea that political correctness has entered the boardroom and is irreversibly damaging conservative causes.
At a philosophical crossroads? Republicans left that fork in their rear view when they chose the patron saint of avarice as their party’s avatar. “My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” Donald Trump told a rally in 2016. He bilked his own followers out of tens of millions (maybe more) in unintended donations last fall. Then, “under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims,” he used more bilked donations “to help cover the refunds he owed.” He pocketed the rest.
Republicans left behind any pretensions of allegiance to the country, its principles, or its constitution on January 6th.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is trying to keep up the facade, nonetheless. He denied new voting restrictions introduced by Republican state legislators in Georgia and elsewhere represent Jim Crow 2.0. He warned big business to “stay out of politics.”
In a statement issued Monday, McConnell now calls corporate free speech “bullying.” “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order,” McConnell wrote.
Responding to those threats of retaliation, Elie Mystal of The Nation tweeted, “The thing the 1st Amendment ACTUALLY PROHIBITS, is the thing the @GOP threatens to do FIRST.” Republicans reach immediately for the belt. It’s what strict fathers do.
McConnell once filed multiple amicus curiae briefs in support of the rights of free speech and association expressed in corporate campaign donations. McConnell insisted those rights were “fundamental” and “of central importance,” Jennifer Rubin writes at The Washington Post. Not now:
McConnell is hardly alone. After Major League Baseball announced it will move its All-Star Game from Georgia, Republicans vowed revenge. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), another strident defender of corporate free speech, now sings a different tune:
Hmmm. Corporations can punish political opponents by giving campaign donations to their friends, but not in adopting business practices they believe are in their own interest?
Not when corporate interests are out of alignment with the Daddy Party’s will to power.