Mitch wants corporations to show him the money. Just not political opinions.
Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell has made it very clear he thinks his constituents are idiots, and he might have a point given how many times we’ve returned him to Washington.
But does he think we don’t notice anything?
Just when it seems like he can’t gaslight us any more (the filibuster has nothing to do with racial history), he comes up with yet another shake-your-head moment.
The man who won the fight to make corporations people in the Citizens United case — turning our democracy over to the highest corporate bidders — has now told them to “stay out of politics.” Unless they’re making a donation, of course.
Is there a movie out yet? Anyone writing the next absurd D.C. political comedy? “Casablanca” redux?
Scene: Mitch McConnell’s palatial Washington office.
Mitch: “How dare Delta and Coca Cola criticize the Georgia voting laws! I’m shocked, shocked! Tell them to stay out of politics.”
Aide: “Yes sir. Here are their PAC checks, sir.”
Mitch, walking out, palms check into jacket, sotto voce: “Thank you, thank you very much.”
What’s so funny is any time these corporations actually take a stand on something political, it’s not because they’ve turned into bleeding heart liberals, but because of the free market.
They’ve done some kind of calculus on whose demands are greater, hundreds of thousands of customers or a handful of Republican legislators, and guess what? The customers won.
Same thing happened in North Carolina in 2016 when the state legislature put together their bathroom bills to hurt transgender people. The NBA and NCAA both threatened to pull all future games. The bathroom bills got turned around.
This is not rocket science, people. Hurting voting rights and LGBTQ citizens and the like may play well with your base, but not with a much bigger tide of young and diverse voters, which is, of course, why Georgia made its voting laws more restrictive in the first place.
(Note to Republican message makers: Colorado, now host to the MLB All Stars game, does NOT have the same voting laws as Georgia because nearly everyone votes by mail. But nice try.)
“From election law to environmentalism to radical social agendas to the Second Amendment, parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government,” McConnell said in a statement. “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order.”
Hahahahaha. He didn’t mind when they no doubt jockeyed for lower corporate taxes, though. That kind of political participation is A-ok.
Our other august Senator, Rand ‘No Masks, No Coke’ Paul, said these big businesses will change their tune when his political base stops drinking America’s favorite soft drink or watching America’s favorite pastime. Good luck with all that cancel culture, Senator.
In fact, good luck with everything. Because McConnell and Paul and the rest of them can keep sticking their fingers in the dyke to stop the inevitable flood, but the fact is that a majority of American citizens recognize that bathrooms should be unregulated, gay marriage is fine and that trying to stop minorities from voting is not. Corporations do, too, because it affects their bottom lines. And that’s a lot scarier than hollow threats from the Senate Minority Leader of the U.S. Senate.
This story was originally published April 7, 2021 at 11:05 AM.
