THE MAN CAN'T BUST OUR REPUBLICANISM

Here's a story from Florida:

A day after he was confirmed by the Florida Senate as the state's new surgeon general, Dr. Joe Ladapo and Gov. Ron DeSantis announced new changes to the state's COVID-19 guidance.

Ladapo and the governor made the announcement in a video posted to the state's website Thursday.

Both said Florida's new guidance pushes back on "unscientific corporate masking" and "outdated CDC guidance." ...

"People want to live freely in Florida, without corporate masking creating a two-tier society and without overbearing isolation for children," DeSantis said.

We know that DeSantis hates all efforts to reduce the spread of COVID, and reserves the right to prohibit mitigation efforts even by private companies -- but this use of "corporate" as a boo! hiss! pejorative is new from DeSantis, as far as I know (although Marjorie Taylor Greene has been talking about "corprate communism," whatever that is, for some time).

And then there's Ted Cruz at CPAC:

Ted Cruz: Big is bad… Big business sucks! pic.twitter.com/WGLFnLbNrH

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 24, 2022

Big is bad, across the board. Big government sucks. Big business sucks! Big tech, big Hollywood, big universities -- any accumulation of power that is centralized is fundamentally dangerous for individuals.

We know that every Republican thinks big government sucks (except when a Republican president wants to fight a war, or brutalize immigrants at the border). And it's not surprising that Cruz (Princeton '92, Harvard Law '95), being a Republican, would say that big universities suck. Also big Hollywood, because Republicans hate Hollywood.

But big business? Does Cruz hate the 50 companies in the Fortune 500 that are based in Texas? Does his hatred of big tech extend to Tesla (now based in Austin), HP, Cisco, Dell, and all the other tech companies in his state? Does his contempt for bigness include a loathing of Goldman Sachs ($1.46 trillion in assets as of December 31, 2021), which continues to employ his wife?

Of course not. Republicans don't hate big business. But it's worth noting that Republicans really, really want you to think they hate big business now. They also want you to think big business is liberal, if not socialist. (If not communist!)

Or maybe I'm wrong -- maybe they're serious, and every Republican will soon be rushing to embrace Elizabeth Warren-style ideas about corporate taxation and breaking up big tech. Maybe they'll make common cause with Bernie Sanders, and with the Squad.

LOL. I crack myself up sometimes.