The alliance between big business and the Republican Party, one of the oldest in U.S. politics, is unusually frayed these days. The question is whether there will be a complete unraveling.
There is ample evidence of a strained relationship. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the current chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, introduced his “Rescue America” policy plan earlier this year with the accusation that “most corporate boardrooms” are now controlled by the “militant left.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has become engaged in a public battle with the Walt Disney Co. that led to the state revoking some of Disney’s long-held powers and tax advantages. Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, a potential member of House Republican leadership in the next session of Congress, recently said that Republicans are “so much healthier now that we’ve divorced ourselves from corporate America.”
Clearly, this isn’t the same Republican Party that nominated the proudly business-friendly ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan just 10 years ago. But the shifting dynamics within the GOP are only half the story. The behavior of the corporate sector is changing, too — and the rise of conservative populism has accelerated this change.
