Republicans Have Never Really Cared About Free Markets

It’s important to remember that Republicans never actually do care about any of their rhetoric and really never have. In the case of “the free market,” what they always mean is the government interfering in the market to keep labor down. There was nothing about “the free market” in Lochner. It was about ensuring that the government kept its thumb on the side of employers. So today, when the Republican Party is sprinting toward full fascism, some people are surprised about how indifferent Republicans are about turning against corporations that don’t do what they want them to. But really there’s nothing surprising about this from the nation of “Small Government Except Enormous Budget Increases for the Military, the Cops, Throwing Black People into Prison, and All Other Things We Like.” Since the Beltway never cared about pointing out the hypocrisy on these issues they don’t care about, Republicans were able to get away with the hypocrisy.

But now, with Republicans actually attacking the businesses the Beltway likes, it has become alarming to some of our media elites.

This week brought the latest evidence that the former party of laissez-faire capitalism has reimagined itself in the image of a Soviet State Planning Committee. Republican lawmakers are now telling investors which businesses they can and can’t invest in — and which investment criteria they will be permitted to consider.

The House Oversight Committee staged a hearing to denounce asset managers for using “environmental, social and governance” criteria, or ESG, when making their investments — and to plot ways to stop investors from doing this terrible thing.

“An unelected cabal of global elites are using ESG, a woke economic strategy, to hijack our capitalist system,” declared an overwrought Steve Marshall, Alabama attorney general and one of two GOP expert witnesses at the anti-investor hearing. For those who didn’t understand him the first time, Marshall used the word “elites” 13 times and “woke” 20 times in his opening testimony.

The other GOP witness, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, declared that there exists a “conspiracy” of ESG-minded investors. He was particularly worried that “asset managers who collectively own significant percentages of utilities’ stock are improperly influencing the operations of those utilities.”

Imagine that! The shareholders who own a company are trying to influence its operations! Will nobody rid us of this capitalist menace?

I mean, yes, this is the position of the Republican Party. Make money our way or die.