This Colbert segment is right on the money…
McConnell’s shamelessness is a thing to behold.
This piece by Joshua Green explains how the Repubicans came to be in this mess:
Like so much else in American politics, the corporate backlash to Republican-led voter-suppression bills in Georgia and Texas is a direct consequence of Donald Trump’s presidency—in this case, the manner in which it ended.
Companies from Coca-Cola Co. to Delta Air Lines Inc. to Microsoft Corp. and dozens of others have condemned a wave of new voting restrictions pushed by Republicans to limit or ban absentee voting, mail voting, drop boxes, and even providing water to people standing in line to cast their ballot.
The sudden blitz of voting restrictions has an unmistakable purpose: A report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School found that “the cumulative effect of so many targeted bills will reduce access to the ballot box for Black voters.” By making it harder to vote, Republican lawmakers are responding to Trump’s false claim that he lost the presidential election due to minority voter fraud, and they’re carrying on Trump’s efforts—this time proactively—to limit votes in minority-heavy areas from being counted.
The Republican attack is blatant enough that it has forced corporate America, under boycott threats from consumers and pressure from Black executives, to respond. “There is no middle ground here,” Kenneth Chenault, the Black former chief executive officer of American Express Co., told the New York Times. “You either are for more people voting, or you want to suppress the vote.”
That stark binary choice led Major League Baseball to announce it was moving July’s All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver, with Commissioner Rob Manfred stating, “Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.” Delta CEO Ed Bastian, whose company is based in Atlanta, blasted Georgia’s restrictions as “based on a lie” and designed to “make it harder for many Georgians, particularly those in our Black and Brown communities, to exercise their right to vote.” Fort Worth-based American Airlines Group Inc. issued a statement criticizing a Texas bill with similar curbs on voting access that just cleared the state’s senate: “At American, we believe we should break down barriers to diversity, equity and inclusion in our society—not create them.”
Rather than try to assuage its corporate donors, Republicans have threatened companies by vowing to impose punitive taxes in retaliation for the criticism. “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned on April 5. “Our private sector must stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex.” Republicans in the Georgia House of Representatives attempted to punish Delta by voting to end a $35 million tax break for jet fuel; the state senate adjourned on April 1 without taking up the bill.
This latest blowup between Republicans and big business could be a harbinger of something that until recently was all but unthinkable: a divorce between the GOP and corporate America. Such a split already appears to be under way in Georgia, where Republican House Speaker David Ralston justified his caucus’s effort to punish Delta, one of his state’s largest employers, by saying, “You don’t feed a dog that bites your hand.”
In the past, corporations worked hard to avoid being dragged into political disputes for fear of drawing a partisan backlash. But Trump’s racially divisive presidency made a stance of corporate neutrality all but impossible. His frequent attacks on Blacks and Latinos and use of racist tropes forced corporations to take sides or endure brand-destroying boycotts and social media campaigns for not speaking out. Last summer’s racial justice protests following George Floyd’s death showed that public expectations for expressions of companies’ moral values now extend beyond just controversies created by Trump.
Although Trump dragged corporate America into the political arena, his presidency showed that companies may not have as much to fear from taking public positions on cultural and policy issues as they once imagined—especially not those involving race.
Nike Inc.’s decision to feature Colin Kaepernick in an ad campaign, after Trump criticized the former National Football League quarterback for kneeling to protest police violence, outraged many Republicans. But a conservative boycott campaign did nothing to hurt Nike’s bottom line, despite Trump’s claim that the company was “getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts.” Since debuting the Kaepernick ad in September 2018, Nike’s stock price has almost doubled.
Car rental companies including Avis Budget Group Inc., Hertz Global Holdings Inc., and Enterprise Rent-a-Car Co. faced boycotts from pro-Trump Republicans after ending discounts for members of the National Rifle Association following the gun massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. That pressure campaign soon fizzled out.
In the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, dozens of companies including Marriott International Inc., AT&T Inc., and Airbnb Inc. halted contributions from their political action committees to the 147 Republican politicians who refused to certify the presidential election results. None faced meaningful blowback. Neither have the organizations that severed ties to Trump’s personal business, including PGA of America and Shopify Inc.
That’s a big reason why Trump’s latest call to boycott MLB, Coke, and Delta over their reaction to the new voter-suppression push rings so hollow and hasn’t prevented dozens of companies from speaking out. Even as Texas Governor Greg Abbott fell in line with Trump’s edict and protested MLB’s action by refusing to throw out the first pitch at the Texas Rangers’ home opener on April 5, the game itself was a sellout.
But an even bigger reason is that the interests of corporate America and the Republican Party began to diverge under Trump’s racialized style of politics. The GOP has sacrificed its traditional pro-business suburban supporters to become ever more reliant on a shrinking pool of older White voters. Its grip on power depends on limiting the votes of people who fall outside that category, including young people and minorities. Georgia is an object lesson in the limits of this approach—Joe Biden won the state and Democrats carried both U.S. Senate seats—and also how Republicans intend to overcome it.
In the 1960s, Atlanta lured corporations to relocate there by billing itself as “The City Too Busy to Hate,” a business-friendly paradise of low taxes and weak labor unions. Georgia became reliably red. But today’s Republican message doesn’t hold nearly the same appeal. The consumers that companies covet most and the employees they’re keenest to hire are the same young people and minorities that Trump and other Republicans routinely demonize. The civic dysfunction that Trump ushered in has even altered the adversarial relationship between labor and business. On Election Day, the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a striking joint statement calling on all Americans to respect the results “of a free and fair election”—a message directed at Trump and his party.
As the current battles in Georgia, Texas, Iowa, and other states show, Republican politicians are loath to do that. But many companies are increasingly leery of this new approach—and more and more willing to speak up and say so.
As the GOP completes its devolution into a strictly white, nationalist party with nothing more on its agenda than opposing the Democratic coalition, it makes sense that its business patrons would back off. The Trump cult isn’t their customer base and anyway, Trumpers have shown they don’t see Trump’s boycotts as MAGA requirements. They have other ways of showing their loyalty to the team — big Trump flags, red hats, violent insurrection. They see no need to give up diet coke and baseball.