The comfortable relationship between Republicans and business is no secret in Washington; the party’s last major legislative achievement was a tax cut project that focused on reducing the corporate tax rate. But that relationship changed in the early weeks of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Also on Monday, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) asked MLB commissioner Rob Manfred if he would cancel his registration at the Augusta National Golf Club, the location of the next Masters golf tournament. Rubio predicted that Manfred would not do so because it “would require a personal sacrifice, as opposed to awakening the corporate virtue of transferring the Atlanta All-Star Game.”
And in March, McConnell joined several Republican senators in a letter to the business community asking them to speak out against efforts to reverse the outcome of a dispute by the Iowa House. Some companies have signaled that they would stop donating to Republicans who have joined efforts by former President Donald Trump to challenge the results of the 2020 elections, especially after the pro-Trump rebellion on Capitol Hill.
“I remember when Democrats and the elite establishment said it was totally wrong for Washington, DC, to override state-certified electoral results. No, wait, that was two months ago, ”said McConnell two weeks ago.
Since then, the MLB has withdrawn the All-Star Game from Georgia under pressure from Biden and other Democrats who began calling the new voting law a form of modern restrictions “Jim Crow”. Passed after Biden and two Democratic Senate candidates won in Georgia, the law expands voter identification requirements and makes changes to early voting and mailing in the state.
McConnell said that “no one really thinks that this current dispute comes close to the horrific racist brutality of segregation”.
“From electoral law to environmentalism, to radical social agendas and the Second Amendment, parts of the private sector continue to behave like an agreed parallel government,” McConnell said on Monday. “Companies should not use economic blackmail to spread misinformation and promote bad ideas that citizens reject at the polls ”.