Remember when Republicans would boldly stand up to any attempts to tell capitalists how to run their businesses? The GOP still claims to be the pro-business party, but you wouldn’t know it from the way many in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail are harassing corporations for the sin of responding constructively to society’s evolution on issues like climate change and LGBTQ rights.
As unnerving as it is to watch Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and ranking House Republicans attacking corporate America with all the fervor of 1960s anti-capitalism socialists, it’s a telling illustration of just how situational the party’s once staunchly pro-corporate legacy has become.
Corporate America has to a large extent always reflected the societal mores of the nation at large. The pre-sexual-revolution, pre-Civil Rights era of corporate advertising (as dramatized, for example, in the cable TV series “Mad Men”) vigorously reinforced the stringent gender and racial roles widely accepted at the time — until it became profitable for advertisers to recognize the cultural changes around them. Or at least unprofitable to ignore them.
