Sunday, April 3, 2022

The Latest "Culture War" Battleground: DeSantis vs. Disney

It has been fascinating to watch Florida Governor DeSantis and Fox News take on DisneyWorld. To put this in some perspective, here are a few statistics to keep in mind:

  • DisneyWorld employs 77,000 Floridians, making it the biggest single-site employer in the United States.
  • Every year 20,000,000 people pay the exorbitant price of $116/day to visit the theme park.
  • Disney owns 27, 258 acres (43 square miles) of land in Florida – about the same area as all of San Francisco and two times the size of Manhattan.
  • Worldwide, Disney brings in over $67 billion in revenue every year.
Nevertheless, because Disney spoke out against Florida's "don't say gay bill," Republicans in the state are contemplating doing something pretty drastic.
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed on Thursday the suggestion of repealing a 55-year-old state law that allows Disney to effectively govern itself on the grounds of Walt Disney World, following the company’s public opposition to a controversial parental rights law in Florida.

"What I would say as a matter of first principle is I don’t support special privileges in law just because a company is powerful and they’ve been able to wield a lot of power," DeSantis said during a press conference in West Palm Beach, Florida on Thursday.

The 55 year-old law DeSantis referred to is the 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement Act. 

In the early 1960s, Walt Disney wanted to build a second theme park on the east coast. He chose an area in central Florida, but kept his plans a secret. Multiple shell companies began buying up land at very low prices from unknowing landowners (the company now brags that they only paid $5 million for the entire acreage). 

Once the land was secured, Disney petitioned the state for the creation of a special taxing district that would give his company almost total autonomy within its borders. The district would provide government services such as land use regulation and planning, building codes, waste treatment, utilities, roads, bridges, fire protection, emergency medical services and environmental services. In other words, with the 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement Act, Disney was successful in avoiding all of the "red tape" that comes with adherence to local policies and became a government unto itself.

That is the law that DeSantis and Florida Republicans are now threatening to unravel. While I find the kind of deal-making Florida entered with Disney back in the 60s appalling, it is not hard to imagine the kind of havoc that would be unleashed on the state if they actually followed through with their threat. 

DeSantis is pretending that these moves against Disney are not simply retaliation for their stand on his "don't say gay bill." But Fox News propagandists like Laura Ingraham aren't even trying to be subtle.

"These businesses [Disney and Apple] should really learn this lesson now before it's too late: Stay in your lane," Ingraham said. "Because if your CEOs want to dive into contentious political issues, about which they know nothing apparently, expect to be treated like any lame political pundit, on, let's say, MSNBC."...

"When Republicans get back into power, Apple and Disney need to understand one thing: Everything will be on the table – your copyright and trademark protection, your special status within certain states, and even your corporate structure itself," Ingraham said.

What's fascinating about all of this is that the marriage between big business and the Republican Party has long been one of the strongest in American politics. Why would someone like Ron DeSantis stake his claim to be the GOP presidential nominee on being willing to go after one of the biggest corporations in the country?

The answer to that question goes back to the early 1970s when Republicans used the racism of the Southern Strategy to convince Dixiecrats to switch parties. A few years later, Paul Weyrich collaborated with white Christian evangelicals to bring their flocks into the fold. As a result, the GOP became the party of big business, racists, and Christian nationalists. 

While the mainstream media is addicted to the idea of Democrats in disarray, they've pretty much ignored the fact that so-called "establishment Republicans" - like Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell - are currently at war with the MAGA crowd. The former are the relics of a time when the GOP was the party of big business and the latter consist of the racists and Christian nationalists (lots of overlap) that currently make up the base of the party. 

At this point, the base is winning. It's not just DeSantis who is proving that point. A year ago, when Amazon workers were trying to organize a union in Mississippi, Marco Rubio (who has traditionally been a big business Republican) wrote an op-ed in support of the workers.

For decades, companies like Amazon have been allies of the left in the culture war, but when their bottom line is threatened they turn to conservatives to save them. Republicans have rightly understood the dangers posed by the unchecked influence of labor unions...But the days of conservatives being taken for granted by the business community are over.
Here’s my standard: When the conflict is between working Americans and a company whose leadership has decided to wage culture war against working-class values, the choice is easy — I support the workers.

Are Republicans really determined to break ranks with big business to fan the flames of their so-called "culture war," or is this simply a matter of posturing. We'll have to wait and see how it all plays out. But this is precisely why I've been talking about a major political realignment being underway in both parties. Here's what I wrote about that three years ago:

The forces that are at work in each [party] are very different and they won’t play out in one election—but will become more evident over time. In light of that, it is incumbent on all of us to let go of assumptions that have guided our prognostications in the past, which will eventually be obsolete, and remain open to the new dynamics that are in the process of emerging.

1 comment:

  1. For a long time, if you assumed that the the objective of the Republican Party was to cut taxes for the top 1% and everything else was a scam to get the votes of people who weren't in the top 1%, you could do a decent jobs of predicting what Republicans would do. For example, you could predict that Trump would push corporate tax cuts through Congress, and attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is funded mainly by taxes on the top 2%), but not back the bipartisan bill to build the wall. But if the Republican party is being run as a scam, it appears that most members of the party are marks who aren't in on the scam. At some point, the marks may take over control of the party.

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