David Drucker of the Washington Examiner highlights a political fault line exposed by Georgia’s new voting law.
The cozy relationship between corporate America and the Republican Party is unraveling after top brands denounced Georgia for enacting a new GOP voting law to satisfy complaints from former President Donald Trump about how the state administers elections.
Criticism from multinational Georgia companies Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines, along with Major League Baseball’s decision to retaliate by yanking this year’s All-Star Game from Atlanta, is driving a wedge between Republicans and corporations at a time when tensions between the longtime political allies were already raw. Democrats claim Georgia Republicans wrote the law to protect their dwindling power base by restricting access to voting, especially in black precincts — attacks parroted by sectors of the business community.
Republicans are outraged by what they argue are gross mischaracterizations of the Georgia voting law and feel betrayed by corporate America, whose interests they defend in Congress. Having felt targeted for their conservative values for several years, Republicans are cautioning big businesses they believe are increasingly taking orders from the Democrats. The row over Georgia voting reforms threatens their alliance and could leave corporations exposed to tax hikes and tighter regulations from President Joe Biden, GOP lawmakers say.
“Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Monday in a lengthy statement he issued as a stark warning to the business community. …
… The new law requires identification for absentee voting, reduces early voting, prohibits giving voters waiting in line water or food if they’re within 150 feet of a polling place, and increases the oversight power of local elections officials. But the statute also makes drop boxes permanent and protected by law and increases access; guarantees more early voting than some stalwart liberal states; and provides resources to eliminate long Election Day lines in urban black neighborhoods.
