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Corporate America should defund the Republican party

Rick Newman · Senior Columnist
Updated 6 min read

Imagine buying a stock, then learning the seller changed his mind and canceled the transaction, without consequence.

Imagine running a storefront with a landlord who raised the rent whenever he felt like it, regardless of what the lease stipulated.

Imagine receiving a patent for a new invention that competitors could copy anyway, cashing in on your breakthrough without investing any of the hard work.

This is the sort of chaos the Republican party—once, supposedly, the party of business—now advocates in its effort to overturn the legitimate election of incoming President Joe Biden. When Congress counts the presidential electoral votes on January 6, at least a dozen Republican senators and more than 100 Republican members of the House plan to challenge the vote tallies in swing states that Biden won, giving him the presidency. Every state ran a free and fair election, with no meaningful disruptions or illegalities. Yet Republicans, led by a petulant President Trump, want to overturn the results anyway, because they don’t like the outcome. The rules don’t matter.

American capitalism works because rules, laws and customs dominate. Buyers and sellers in virtually every transaction know what to expect and have legal recourse if the other side cheats. Contracts force everybody to abide by predictable norms. There are flaws, but enforceable rules make the system better for everybody: Big firms, small businesses, workers and consumers.

Trump and his Republicans conspirators trying to overturn Biden’s win are saying, just this once, let’s break the rules. No biggie.

But it is a biggie. These Republicans are endorsing Venezuela-style ad hockery to keep their group in power illegitimately. Markets seem to be writing off the GOP insurgency as political shenanigans that are just for show. It’s way worse than that. The former “law and order” party has morphed into a crime and disorder party that cannot be business-friendly if its only priority is to retain power at any cost. This is a metastasis of the crony capitalism Trump has practiced for the last four years. It rewards only those on the winning side, while punishing those who play by the rules.

FILE - In this Dec. 16, 2020 file photo, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asks questions during a Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee hearing to discuss election security and the 2020 election process on Capitol Hill in Washington. Walmart apologized on Wednesday, Dec. 30, for a tweet that called Hawley a sore loser for contesting the U.S. presidential election. The tweet from Walmart was in response to Hawley’s tweet announcing his plans to raise objections next week when Congress meets to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the election. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP, File)
In this Dec. 16, 2020 file photo, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asks questions during a Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee hearing to discuss election security and the 2020 election process on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP, File)

The many businesses that keep politicians in power by funding their campaigns should stop donating to any candidate who doesn’t overtly support the rule of law, in business and politics, both. Here’s a starter list of the 12 seditious senators who want to overturn Biden’s election, along with some of the top corporate donors for each, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. There’s no simple list of corporate donors to politicians, because companies donate to both campaign committees and political action committees that campaign on behalf of a favored politician. Some “dark money” donations aren’t even public. This list represents a combination of corporate donations to PACs and companies with the employees who donated the most to each candidate.

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