GOP’s Mickey Mouse Moment - Trump-DeSantis battle over Disney blurs what the party should stand for.
Levan Ramishvili
The Donald Trump Rapid Reaction Machine primarily serves to produce Twitter and cable-TV drama. In the case of Mr. Trump’s reflexive defense of Disney, it’s providing the GOP an overdue opportunity to rethink its relationship with increasingly woke corporate America.
The surprise wasn’t that Mr. Trump dumped on Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor is angry that Disney quietly stripped his new board of its power to oversee the corporate kingdom. Mr. DeSantis this week escalated, promising more legislation to reassert authority and joking the state might build a prison next to Disney World. The press piled on, as did Mr. Trump—always eager to join a good kicking. An impulsive Truth Social jibe warned that Disney might flee the state, adding that this fight is “all so unnecessary, a political STUNT!”
The surprise is that it took this long for Mr. Trump’s disdain of his rival to land him crosswise with the base. There is a reason Mr. DeSantis is taking on woke Disney—Republican voters love it. So eager was Mr. Trump to join liberals on attack, he put himself on the side of a company that disdains parental rights, axed the words “boys and girls” in park greetings, and just announced it would host the world’s largest LGBTQ+ conference. This is unlikely to sit well with conservative voters, and unlikely to be the only time Mr. Trump puts himself in this spot.
The DeSantis-Disney fracas inspired other presidential hopefuls to weigh in. Chris Christie explained that Mr. DeSantis’s effort to “punish” the company meant he wasn’t “a conservative.” In February Mike Pence criticized the bill stripping Disney of local governing authority as “beyond the scope” of what a “limited-government Republican” should do. The DeSantis team frames its Disney actions not as retribution, but as a principled attempt to reduce Disney’s “special privilege” and create an “even playing field.”
This is a muddle in search of a coherent, updated Republican position on corporate America. The GOP has long been the party of free markets, which effectively allies it with “business.” Yet defending that crew becomes harder as corporate America alienates conservatives with political and culture wars. The Chamber of Commerce backs antibusiness House Democrats. Delta slams Georgia’s election reform. Banks divest from fossil fuels. ESG, Bud Light labels, Gillette’s “toxic masculinity” and Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ads. Big tech censorship.
Not that corporate foolishness is new. These pages in 1979 ran the editorial “Down With Big Business,” scoring CEOs who supported bigger government—given that they could absorb the costs while smaller competitors could not. Corporations chase short-term self interest, not capitalism.
Yet for decades the GOP has failed to articulate a principled GOP position. The party remains incapable of drawing a line between its support for free markets and the ills of corporate welfare and rent seeking. For every Republican who sensibly votes to lower overall corporate tax rates, there’s another swilling dollars on tax credits and subsidies for favored industries. For every GOP legislature that eases regulatory burdens to create a better business environment, there’s a GOP governor bribing companies to relocate with tax incentive packages.
This is called picking winners and losers—and it’s antithetical to free markets. Yet the practice is picking up steam. Republican new-righters (such as Marco Rubio) see popularity in feeding the anticorporate backlash, claiming greedy companies can’t be trusted so Congress must direct the economy via national industrial policy (à la China). That sits fine with GOP spenders, who are salivating to replicate last year’s $280 billion semiconductor giveaway.
This is a dangerous trend, leaving the GOP in a confused space with voters and at risk of economy-damaging policies. Republicans have tried to paper over their lack of a cohesive approach with loud condemnations of this or that firm (a trend Mr. Trump pioneered in office). Mr. DeSantis went further with his Disney legislation, but even this amounts to an isolated fight—unmoored from a broader philosophy of how a free-market GOP handles politicized corporate America.
An enterprising presidential aspirant might see the benefit of filling that space with a simple proposition: The GOP is cutting the corporate cord. It won’t weaponize government against business—yet neither will it coddle business. It will support broad-based free-market reforms, if primarily to support American’s millions of small businesses. But the days of lobbyists and elite corporate welfare—subsidies, tax credits, handouts—are over. The Fortune 500 never needed this help—and certainly don’t deserve it now. Just think of the taxpayer savings. Just think of the clarity.
Republican politicians who feel the need to do more might remember that—as in everything—real America does things better than government. Consumers are already punishing woke corporations—see Bud’s desperate new pro-America ad or Disney’s operating losses. Maybe the party of free markets can trust the free market to work.
Americans celebrate entrepreneurship; they despise special corporate treatment. Republicans might try joining them in what is a quite straightforward—and refreshing—position.