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The trouble began last year when Florida Republicans advanced a proposal critics have labeled the “Don’t Say Gay” policy. Disney, a powerhouse in the Sunshine State and Florida’s largest private employer, eventually criticized the GOP’s anti-LGBTQ measure.
Gov. Ron DeSantis didn’t just disagree with the company’s opinion, he set out to punish Disney for daring to issue mild and inconsequential criticisms of a measure he signed into law.
The Republican initially planned to revoke Disney World’s designation as a special tax district, but when that proved untenable — the policy would’ve raised taxes on many nearby Floridians — DeSantis settled on a plan that gave him greater control over the local district’s board. He signed the new policy into law yesterday.
But soon after, the governor added a related and unexpected thought. The Washington Post reported:
Though the board is tasked with overseeing duties such as sewage treatment and road maintenance at Disney’s properties, DeSantis suggested Monday that he is also expecting it to act as a sort of moral arbiter for the company he has described as a “woke Burbank corporation” that is “trying to inject woke ideology” on children.
“When you lose your way, you’ve got to have people that are going to tell you the truth,” DeSantis said. “So we hope they can get back on. But I think all of these board members very much would like to see the type of entertainment that all families can appreciate.”
The Post’s report added that the new board member won’t have direct control over Disney’s creative content, “but because the new appointees hold purse strings over infrastructure projects, they could influence Disney’s decisions.”
So let’s take stock. DeSantis decided to use the power of his political office to punish a company, not for engaging in wrongdoing, but for expressing an inconsequential opinion he didn’t like. After advancing that policy, the GOP governor publicly raised the prospect of his political appointees using their official influence to nudge an entertainment company to produce content in line with DeSantis’ preferences.
In related news, I still remember the days when Republicans supported limited government and decried anything that resembled government overreach.
When Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s Republican governor, recently suggested that DeSantis was becoming a “big-government authoritarian,” he clearly had a point.
Revisiting our earlier coverage, in early months of his presidency, Barack Obama faced a long list of crises, including the prospect of the U.S. auto industry collapsing. The Democratic White House put together a controversial — but extremely effective — rescue plan that required, among other things, some creditors to accept some losses.
The right was apoplectic, not because conservatives thought the plan would fail, but because they saw it as an outrageous example of government interference in the free market. In fact, from Capitol Hill to conservative media, Republicans pushed a specific phrase with great enthusiasm in 2009: “gangster government.” The public was told, repeatedly and with a level of vigor bordering on hysteria, that the Obama administration was trying to “bully“ private entities into doing what politicians wanted.
“[T]hat ain’t the American way,” Larry Kudlow declared on CNBC in May 2009.
These principles were, of course, conveniently forgotten when Donald Trump took office and the Republican tried to bully all kinds of companies into submission, including Goodyear. And GM. And Harley-Davidson. And Nordstrom, Amazon.com, and AT&T, among others.
But to fully appreciate the degree to which Republicans have gone from denouncing to embracing “gangster government,” look no further than Florida’s state capital.
This post revises our related earlier coverage.