VIRTUE-SIGNALING
SACRAMENTO » Officials in overwhelmingly Democratic California have long used state power to torment businesses they don’t like for a variety of ideological reasons. The Newsom administration is, by its own admission, trying to put the entire fossil-fuels industry out of business because of the governor’s concerns about climate change.
A succession of Democratic attorney generals — Rob Bonta, Xavier Becerra and Kamala Harris — used the state Department of Justice to go after gun manufacturers, insurance companies and carmakers for transparently political reasons. Sure, they concoct legalistic justifications — such as claiming that pension funds’ coal investments endanger the state’s long-term fiscal health.
But they’re really just misusing their police authority to achieve progressive policy goals. Republicans have been right in arguing that state Democrats should knock off the politics of virtue signaling, stick to the basics of governance and treat all citizens and businesses equitably. Having failed to rein in the left,
California Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t much different than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in playing politics with virtue-signaling. however, the right now is mimicking its tactics.
In states where conservatives have power they are more aggressive than progressives in punishing companies they dislike — not just for the nature of their business, but for the operational decisions those companies make and the political views corporate leaders express. Like Democrats, they’re doing real harm even if their efforts are all about posturing.
Florida is the prime example. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is positioning himself as the Trumpiest candidate for the 2024 presidential race, wants to punish Twitter because its board thwarted Elon Musk’s buyout attempt. I argued that his takeover would advance freer speech, but it’s an appalling abuse of government power to intervene in that private dispute.
“We’re going to be looking at ways that the state of Florida potentially can be holding these Twitter board of directors accountable for breaching their fiduciary duty,” DeSantis declared at a recent press conference. He previously signed a First-Amendment-shredding tech bill that also is about posturing given that courts almost certainly will invalidate it.
Whenever a politician says “we,” that politician really is saying “the machinery of government.” Yet to the hosannas of conservatives who claim to be the upholders of limited government and the Constitution, DeSantis took things further by vowing to strip special state zoning rules that give Disney magical self-governing powers around its theme-park kingdom in Orlando.
It’s fair to criticize the special privileges enjoyed by influential corporate players. This columnist and editorial board have regularly slammed Disney’s outsized political influ
“Owning the other side can indeed be great fun as long as your side is in power. It’s safer for everyone’s liberties, however, if both parties stayed within some guardrails.”
ence and subsidies in Anaheim. Cities ought to treat all businesses equally, although there’s a serious case for exempting private enterprises from burdensome land-use and planning regulations.
But that serious debate is not the impetus in Florida. As Allahpundit explained on the conservative Hot Air website, DeSantis had no problem carving out a Disney exemption from his tech bill nor has he or Florida Republicans