According to a report from Politico's Derek Anderson, the Republican party's full-on attack on the Disney Company for supporting the LGBTQ community is likely headed nowhere just as a previous battle with the NFL over Black Lives Matter was a major flop.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has been leading the charge against the entertainment giant after they criticized Florida's so-called "Don't say gay" bill he signed, and that has led some conservatives to join his war to the point where they have gone off the rails with accusations of pedophilia.
As Anderson wrote, "The attempt by Republicans to demonize one of America’s most beloved and trusted corporations seems so quixotic on its face that it invites a simple question: not 'Why would they do this?' or even 'Why would they think it could be done?' but 'Why would it even seem advantageous to try?'"
The answer, he explained is that culture wars have generally been effective for the GOP over the years and the Republicans have never been shy about falling back on what worked before despite cultural changes.
"The story of fighting back against that gradual, seemingly inevitable leftward cultural creep is more or less the story of conservatism itself. The incentives and pressures that have led conservatives on this particular quest, however — one that’s not only almost certainly hopeless, but that has led them into sinister rhetorical territory in referring to opponents of the law as 'groomers,' or manipulative pedophiles — are quite modern, and reveal how much both our cultural and political landscape have shifted over just the past decade of American life, " he wrote, before adding that America has been down this road before.
"The approach recalls the anti-gay crusades of the 1970s," he explained. "But to argue that corporate America is engaged in a mass conspiracy to turn your kids gay decidedly does not."
He continued, "The GOP attacks on Disney are reminiscent above all else of their unsuccessful campaign against the NFL, with its support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Both are among the few remaining monocultural institutions in American life and present an irresistible opportunity to make a broader case about the national 'character.' Ideological conservatives are nowhere near the rooms in which decisions about those institutions’ publicly-professed politics are made, and therefore seek to steer the conversation from the outside. And in both cases, conservatives have conflated corporate messaging with support for extreme edge cases within each issue, like police abolition or medical youth gender transition, hoping that Americans will do the same."
He then warned that hard-right conservatives may win over the base with their attacks -- but at the risk of alienating the masses.
"If you’re an ambitious Republican like Ron DeSantis, it’s a potential opportunity to win the base’s fealty. In going on the offense against Disney, he and other Republicans like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene are betting they can do that without alienating the vast middle," he wrote. "But in their choice of target, and the hateful and off-putting character of their attack to all but the most extremely online conservative activists, they’ve unwittingly revealed just how little leverage they really wield when it comes to America’s cultural mainstream."
You can read his whole piece here.
