Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties.
The state of the GOP is not good.
HOW GOP POPULISM COULD PLAY OUT FOR BIG BUSINESS: Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton today unloaded on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, blasting the business lobby in an interview on the “Hugh Hewitt Show” as a “a front service for woke corporations” while asserting that the business lobby had “purged … real Republicans” in its top leadership and lost its influence with the party by endorsing Democrats, per The Hill’s Alex Gangitano. (In a statement to The Hill, the Chamber called Washington “confused” and doubled down on its intention to back “pro-free enterprise, pro-business, pro-governing members of Congress in both parties.”)
— The interaction is emblematic an ongoing realignment in the GOP that signals “trouble ahead for the tried-and-true coalition of Republicans and corporate America,” particularly when combined with the recently announced retirements of lawmakers like Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), the Republican lobbying firm CGCN Group wrote in a memo to clients this morning.
— For corporate America, the shift means the party is “increasingly unwilling to listen simultaneously to corporate priorities on, say, tax and trade policy” when viewed alongside the type of “woke-ism” Cotton, a potential 2024 contender, targeted the Chamber over, according to the memo. The retirement of more business-minded lawmakers, it argues, paves the way for populist ones who have “tapped into the party’s anti-Big Business bent, which seems relatively indifferent to an increase in capital gains and corporate income taxes.”
— “It’s not clear what this tendency suggests over the long-term,” the memo reads. “But for now, the business community needs to rethink how it engages the GOP on issues they consider fundamental. Because their list of priorities and the GOP’s may not always overlap in the same way it once did.”
