Feehery: Fighting woke capitalism

You have to feel for the multimillionaire CEO’s who just want to be able to cash their enormous checks.

They worked hard to get where they are. They played the inside game. They figured out how to hire the right allies and fire the employees who were either unproductive or uncooperative. They made their numbers and now, they deserve their just rewards.

They just want to get paid.

They don’t want to get involved in politics. They don’t want to become “woke”, although that certainly makes things more agreeable at all the black-tie cocktails parties where they network. They don’t necessarily want to virtue signal, but that certainly helps with the guilt as they shop for the latest Tesla.

Tesla, as you know, makes its money by skillfully exchanging carbon credits. Elon Musk is one smart dude and he speaks his mind, something most modern CEO’s don’t dare do. It’s much safer to give in to the socialists, pay off the Black Lives Matter activists, put yard signs outside your spacious mansions, and continue to get paid.

“The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.” So said Karl Marx or Mao or Stalin, or maybe all of them.

Woke capitalists are making a bargain with the devil.

Republicans, who are the greatest of the unwoke capitalists, don’t know what to do with a CEO class that seems intent on promoting issues that will hurt the bottom line of their companies.

It started, in earnest, during the BLM protests, when many corporations decided to donate to the Black Lives Matter organization, which helpfully funneled that cash to far-left Democratic political campaigns.

Those far-left Democrats are pushing hard for higher taxes on corporations, more regulations, more equity and less capitalism.

When most House Republicans and many Senate Republicans made the political determination that they had to protest the Electoral College vote, corporate CEOs and their corporate boards became unhinged and decided to stop their political action committees from giving contributions to the resistors, despite the fact that those resistors were the only folks who seem willing to defend capitalism.

And now, we have the Georgia law.

I personally think that Republicans in Georgia could have better framed passage of that law, as I wrote last week.

But that doesn’t mean that I support corporate America’s reaction to it.

What was Delta and Coca-Cola thinking?

And why would Major League Baseball decide to go out of its way to hurt the city of Atlanta? It’s not like it had anything to do with passing the law that its citizens overwhelmingly oppose.

Then there are the facts about the law, the No. 1 fact being that what Georgia did is far less restrictive than what New York state already has on the books.

It’s as if “60 Minutes” would run a fake-expose on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis while ignoring completely the real-life walking, talking scandal of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

But I digress.

The bottom-line here is that woke capitalism might be bad for the bottom-line of most major companies, but for the CEO class, it’s what keeps them getting paid their big salaries.

For Republicans, if they want to successfully stop this woke takeover of the capitalist class, they need to learn from the masters.

Boycotts usually don’t work, because most Republicans like to drink Coke and fly Delta.

Supporting socialist policies won’t really work either, because socialism is terrible and it will hurt their constituents.

The best recourse for conservatives and Republicans is to hit the CEOs where it really hurts, among their shareholders and on their boards.

The left has mastered the shareholder-activism game. The right needs to focus on mobilizing shareholders to stop the woke nonsense.

And the right needs to pay much more attention on what is happening on corporate boards. Putting heat on the corporate board members to actually pay attention to the bottom line would be a very good first step.

If the woke win in the corporate board room, American capitalism has lost. And with it goes America.

Fighting the woke capitalists is a worthy cause for the conservative movement.

Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at www.thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) when he was majority whip and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).