The GOP Versus Corporate America?

You know, it’s funny.

For one half of America’s political duopoly, principles aren’t just malleable depending on the circumstances, they’re completely expendable.

Deficits, debt and fiscal rectitude only matter when a Democrat is in the White House, for example.

“Forgetting” about budget discipline when tax cuts and military spending are in play is standard operating procedure for Republicans. But increasingly, the GOP finds itself trampling on its own orthodoxy when it comes to the government’s relationship with corporate America.

Government, the doctrine goes, should stay mostly (or entirely) out of the private sector. Washington should take a hands-off approach to corporations, traditional GOP talking points demand. That’s true even when citizens’ lives are at stake and even when heavy-handed government action is necessary to avert calamitous outcomes. Better a catastrophe than to impede “Mr. Market.”

What we’ve learned recently, though, is that those principles are just as expendable as the budget. When social media took action to stop the spread of misinformation, companies were subjected to threats from the White House, backed up by Republicans on Capitol Hill. The same Capitol Hill which was besieged in January by scores of citizens whose anger was the direct result of the same kind of misinformation that social media outlets belatedly (and unsuccessfully) sought to curtail.

Now, corporations are increasingly prone to standing up for social causes like fighting climate change, fostering equality of opportunity and protecting voting rights. Republicans aren’t amused, and their anger was crystallized Monday by Mitch McConnell.

“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,” he said, chastising the likes of Delta and Coke for expressing concern about Georgia’s new voting laws.

McConnell proceeded to make a threat. “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order,” he seethed.

Last I checked, corporations in America are free to publicly espouse any positions they like, as long as they’re legal. Coca-Cola can express dismay at public policy just like Twitter can ban Donald Trump. The idea that government would step in and silence corporations or, more extreme, compel them to adopt positions opposite those they’d prefer to adopt, is antithetical to free-market principles. It could also be detrimental to profits — hold that thought.

McConnell went on to demand Monday that America’s private sector “stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex” and cease and desist from “frantic left-wing signaling.”

To say that’s a contradictory position for McConnell would be an understatement. As Jennifer Rubin wrote, “McConnell is second to none in protecting First Amendment rights of corporations — at least when the subject is money.” Mitch, Rubin reminded Americans, is “a longtime opponent of limits on campaign donations as a form of speech [and] has often defended unlimited dark money in lofty terms.”

Politico called McConnell’s statement a “broadside” against corporate America that represents “the latest sign of a fraying alliance between big companies and the Republican Party.”

Of course, it’s hardly surprising that the GOP would abandon principle. All politicians do that — habitually.

What’s notable, though, is the extent to which Republicans seem to be slowly realizing that their positions on a variety of socioeconomic issues are no longer compatible with modernity.

When it comes to the C-suite, I’ll take the cynical view in order to strip partisan politics out of the discussion. Corporations are beholden to shareholders every quarter and, in many respects, every day. In the past, that obligation led corporates to be among the world’s worst offenders when it came to things like harming the environment and trampling on human rights. The bottom line always comes first. Workers, communities, public health and the planet itself are secondary, at best. Often, they don’t matter at all.

Now, however, it’s fashionable to be “woke.” And being fashionable is often synonymous with being profitable. Companies are rewarded for adopting plans to help address climate change, for example. Conversely, failing to be sufficiently proactive when it comes to hot-button issues like gun violence and equality can cost corporations dearly, whether it’s something as ephemeral as a short-lived advertising ban or something more serious like missing out on the opportunity to be included in indices and ETFs that shun shares of companies seen as insufficiently attentive to the needs of the modern world.

Seen in that light, McConnell’s threats (and similar accusations from his colleagues) are in fact demands that corporations jeopardize profitability by eschewing the benefits that may accrue from catering to social trends.

If I’m a sportswear brand and I can make an extra $100 million for my shareholders this quarter by marketing a line of apparel championing the plight of semi-endangered polar bears, who is Mitch McConnell to tell me, an executive entrusted with billions in shareholder wealth, that I can’t sell my polar bear sweaters?

Think on that.