Woke corporations these days routinely threaten to pull their donations to Republican politicians if they don’t toe the line on the approved socio-cultural worldview. This belligerent attitude especially applies to any support for former President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 “insurrection” on Capitol Hill. In taking this approach, however, these activist businesses are playing right into the hands of a populist America First movement that is chomping at the bit to remove undue corporate influence over GOP elected officials.
If you’re a powerful Republican K Street lobbyist, it’s time to hit the panic button.
‘An Unraveling Is Coming’
on March 17, Breitbart reported that CGCN, a leading GOP insider lobbying firm, had published on its website a hand-wringing memo, titled The Party They’ll Get, Not the Party They Want. The astonishingly frank missive warns the moneyed corporations that have been the lifeblood of Swamp chicanery for the past three decades that their progressive public posturing is fueling the transformation of the GOP into a populist nationalist party – the very thing they most oppose:
“[E]vidence suggests an unraveling is coming. GOP populists in Congress are often frustrated by (in their view) woke CEOs embracing avant-garde social agendas. The upshot, especially for policy, is a party increasingly unwilling to listen simultaneously to corporate priorities on, say, tax and trade policy, alongside their CEOs latest cultural forays.”
CGCN implores major corporate brands to consider the consequences of their actions across a spectrum of controversial topics affecting the country today. The firm warns that a new breed of congressional Republicans is “gravitating more and more to the views and demands of their conservative base.” The memo goes on to note: “‘woke-ism’ is a central target of GOP voters, and their younger leaders are attacking what they perceive is its unholy grip on the nation’s major social, cultural, and economic institutions.”
Simply as strategy alone, what these purveyors of politicized commerce are doing seems immensely foolhardy. Major corporations are going out of their way to demonize a grassroots Republican voter base for staunchly opposing illegal immigration, leftist cancel culture, and radical social engineering causes. At the same time, the faction they control within the party is waving the battle flag once again for a red crusade against President Biden’s proposed massive tax hikes, which would include a hefty spike in the corporate tax rate.
It is a pageant of sheer absurdity. After repeatedly knocking GOP voters to the ground over core issues near and dear to their hearts, big business stands over them, pleading: “Hey, you gotta get up and fight for my accounting ledger.”
Sympathy For the Slanderers?
Let’s take one example. Home Depot co-founder and whale GOP donor Ken Langone railed against presidential candidate Joe Biden’s tax plan last October, using the traditional Republican argument that taxes aimed at the wealthy will harm the middle class. “You aren’t going to get the revenue numbers by just taxing the rich,” Langone told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. “The only way a tax increase will generate revenues is to go after the middle class. That’s where the numbers are.”
This appeal to the middle class was followed up by Langone promptly throwing Trump and his supporters under the bus immediately after the events of Jan. 6, saying he felt “betrayed.” Eager to get in on the grandstanding, Home Depot issued a statement on Jan. 27 declaring that the company was “pausing to take time to carefully review and reevaluate each of the [GOP] members [of Congress] who voted to object to the election results before considering further contributions to them.”
The company is also feverishly working to boost its woke racial bona fides in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that rocked the nation last summer. The Home Depot Foundation has partnered with the Georgia Center for Nonprofits to create a “Diversity, equity, and inclusiveness resources for nonprofits” hub. The Home Depot logo is prominently featured on the radical guide, which is awash in material lashing out at “white privilege,” “systemic racism” and similar leftist themes. It includes a “Hate Map” produced by the thoroughly discredited Southern Poverty Law Center. An item labeled “Internalized Racism” states: “For white people, internalized privilege can involve feeling a sense of superiority and entitlement, or holding negative beliefs about people of color.”
An associated “Training and Popular Education” link found among the hub material includes such topics as:
- Abolish Columbus Day: Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples: Resources and Tools
- We Charge Genocide Again!
- Personal Privilege Profile
- The 1619 Project Curriculum
Accusing middle-class Americans of being stained with deep-seated, ingrained racism is hardly the way to get them on board with efforts to oppose higher tax rates for big corporations and the wealthy. The lobbyist suits at CGCN see “trouble ahead for the tried-and-true coalition of Republicans and corporate America — and the issues they care about.” The more Big Woke Inc. continues to insult middle-class America, the worse it is going to get.
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Read more from Joe Schaeffer.
