Florida Republicans Are Right to Push Back against Disney

By Ryan Ellis

Thursday, April 21, 2022

 

Going after Disney is the victim’s punch to the nose to correct the bully — stop attacking us, or we will defend ourselves.

 

Ihave to disagree with my fellow movement conservative Charles C. W. Cooke (and some others, judging from Twitter; namely, Hannah Cox and Brad Polumbo, but I’m sure there are more) about Disney’s smackdown by Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature. It’s pretty indisputable that what gave rise to this effort was Disney’s vocal and unfair opposition to Florida’s parental-rights law, the one that prevented gender and sexuality topics from being taught to little kids by teachers in public schools. It should be noted that there is zero daylight between Cooke and me on this law. The issue is the need for this follow-on action on the part of DeSantis and the legislature.

 

For those unaware of the details: Yesterday, the Florida senate passed a law stripping Disney of some special tax and legal privileges it received when Disney World was built. (The Florida house is expected to follow suit today.) It’s important to note that the law doesn’t single out Disney, and is arguably a repeal of corporate welfare and backwater cronyism. To quote the governor’s office (in a missive to Cox and Polumbo):

 

“The governor has consistently supported a more even, fair playing field for all businesses in Florida. It is not ‘retaliatory’ to pass legislation that allows all corporations to do business on a more even playing field.

 

“The proclamation from our office called to examine the existence of all special districts. Disney benefits from one of these special districts. The special district associated with Disney has existed for decades, since before Governor DeSantis was born. As you’ve acknowledged, special districts could in some instances show favoritism. Should a corporation be serving as a regulator and a business at the same time? Should a corporation get to avoid standard environmental permitting processes? Should a corporation engage in eminent domain? Other businesses don’t get these privileges.

 

“It was unfortunate that Disney decided to wade into a political debate and attempt to overturn a common-sense law, enacted by a duly elected legislature and signed by a duly elected governor, with the support of the vast majority of Floridians. In fact, it was Disney that ‘retaliated’ by publicly vowing to ‘repeal’ or have the law ‘struck down.’”

 

The question raised by Cooke was whether this was a piling-on exercise. Having won the parental-rights-bill fight against Disney, why were DeSantis and Florida Republicans now going after Disney?

 

Simple: It is high time to stick a head on a pike.

 

For the past several years, giant multinational corporations have seen their boardrooms seized by militant woke political activists. They have, in turn, pressured CEOs into aggressive anti-conservative political fights. Recall Coca-Cola, Major League Baseball, and Delta’s breathless crusade against the modest Georgia election-reform law. Before that, it was Walmart and Owens Corning (to name just two companies) forcing employees into insulting, mandatory “critical race theory” training. You can count on Fortune 100 C-suites to oppose every effort imaginable on parental rights, protecting girls’ sports, and religious free exercise. This is to say nothing of the direct efforts at conservative cancellation done by Twitter and the other Big Tech giants.

 

As Captain Picard famously said in Star Trek: First Contact, “the line must be drawn here — this far, no farther!” At some point, conservatives were going to have to make an example of one of these companies, not just grumble about them after they get away with it. These corporations assume that it’s still 2010, and that our genteel Marquess of Queensberry norms will prevent conservatives from retaliating against their many political campaigns and rhetorical posturing against us. Going after Disney is the victim’s punch to the nose to correct the bully: Stop attacking us, or we will defend ourselves.

 

Is that some betrayal of conservative principles? Hardly. What we’re talking about in the Disney case is taking away a corporate-welfare, crony carveout for The Mouse. It’s not like we’re drafting Goofy into the military or raising the capital-gains tax on Disney stock.

 

And if this bloody nose is a lesson to boardrooms across America? America will be all the better for it. We need to take political maximalism out of every aspect of our lives. We shouldn’t have to swear an oath to wokeness to watch Snow White or drink a soda. As Michael Jordan famously said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”