Not Only The Left. Now Conservatives Embrace Boycotts and Regulations

Conservatives are celebrating the impact of their boycott of Bud Light over its partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is using all the tools he can to fight Disney and other firms accused of a "woke" agenda.

Long seen as the purview of the political left, boycotts and calls for regulation of big business are now being adopted by some culture war Republicans in a paradigm shift for a party long seen as unquestioningly pro-business and a recipient of its money.

The tactics are dividing the GOP, with some traditionalists arguing that business should be left alone—and that making a fuss can discourage political donations. But the party's grassroots support has shifted since the era of former President Donald Trump.

"It is ironic how social issues now trump the free market and preferring deregulation over regulation," said Robert Shapiro, a professor of government and public affairs at Columbia University. "It shows how the GOP base has changed due to the influence of voters without college degrees, and its leaders worry about maintaining their anti-woke support."

The success of the Bud Light boycott has been the biggest yet from conservatives that had also called for Hershey's chocolate to be shunned over its celebration of a trans influencer.

Transgender issues have become a hot topic in America. Many conservatives say they do not oppose gay rights, but object to trans women presenting themselves as women or taking part in women's sports and to so-called "gender affirming" surgery and drugs for trans-identifying youths.

Bud Light's partnership with 26-year-old Mulvaney was announced on April 2 on her Instagram account to coincide with the beer's partnership with the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) March Madness tournament.

The backlash from the right was swift with widespread media and social media coverage of the boycott. Music celebrity Kid Rock blasted Bud Light cans with a machine gun while cursing parent company Anheuser-Busch. Travis Tritt publicly ditched Bud Light and said other country music stars are quietly boycotting the brand. Someone earned 1 million views for his video of him simply pouring a can of Bud Light into a kitchen sink.

A beer industry news site, Brewbound, reported that for the week ending April 8 the brand experienced a decline in off-premises dollar sales, volume and dollar share while Coors Light, a competing brand, experienced a "notable uptick."

A Rasmussen poll from April 18 said that 54 percent of Americans supported the Bud Light boycott with 30 percent against. Meanwhile, two top Anheuser-Busch marketing executives were reported to be taking a "leave of absence"—including Alissa Heinerscheid, its vice president of marketing for Bud Light. The company did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment.

Anheuser-Busch also released a patriotic-sounding statement from CEO Brendan Whitworth that boasted of a "proud history supporting our communities, military, first responders, sports fans, and hard-working Americans everywhere."

"We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people" Whitworth said. "My time serving this country taught me the importance of accountability and the values upon which America was founded: freedom, hard work and respect for one another. "

New Activism

"It's absolutely a paradigm shift," said Trafalgar Group chief pollster Robert Cahaly. "There is a new kind of activism among conservative consumers. Companies ought to be careful."

Trafalgar is now researching Americans' views about the Bud Light incident and Cahaly said he's seeing many people want corporations to steer clear of politics. "They want to send a message with what they buy. Conservatives aren't asking Budweiser to put a picture of Donald Trump or the American flag on a beer can, they're just saying they crossed a line with Dylan Mulvaney."

Some conservatives have criticized the boycott of Anheuser-Busch, however, noting that it traditionally gave bigger political donations to Republicans than to Democrats. But Shapiro said these donations were not as important as they once were.

"Campaign funding from them would be replaced by small contributions from its base supporters," he said, adding that "boycotts will work when they immediately affect business directly or the business perceives a mounting effect."

The internal strife over GOP strategy towards business has also been highlighted by DeSantis' war with Disney since it said it would try to overturn the state's Parental Rights in Education bill — which bans education on gender issues for young children and has been dubbed "Don't Say Gay" by critics.

DeSantis is "getting it wrong on Disney," Arkansas's former Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, told Fox News Sunday. "I don't agree with how Disney has handled things, but you don't use the heavy-handed government to punish a business."

DeSantis has been trying to strip Disney of valuable perks for its Florida theme parks, and he recently suggested he might build a prison adjacent to them.

Such efforts have earned the opprobrium of President Donald Trump, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and other Republicans who accuse DeSantis of being in favor of big government and abandoning his pro-business, conservative credentials when he sees fit to do so.

Florida lawmakers have also passed a bill to prevent the government from investing public funds in entities promoting environmental, social, and governance goals, known collectively as the "ESG movement."

DeSantis is expected to sign the bill, and he also launched a similar effort to prevent the Florida Retirement System Pension Plan from engaging in ESG investing. "Corporations across America continue to inject an ideological agenda through our economy rather than through the ballot box," he complained earlier this year.

Pollster Cahaly said pro-business conservatives are interpreting DeSantis' actions incorrectly. "He's not asking for more regulation, he's saying Disney ought not be given advantages that other entertainment businesses in Florida do not have," he said.

Some Republicans have also highlighted the corporate donations for their party,

Right-wing TV host Tucker Carlson also called for new strategies in fighting "wokeness", saying older conservatives did not understand how the ground had been changed by the censorship on cultural issues by left-leaning social media firms.

He told an enthusiastic crowd at a Heritage Foundation event on Friday that corporate executives had zero incentive to challenge left-wing doctrine.

"What you're watching is not a political movement. It's evil," he said. "No one is trained to stand up in the middle of a Citibank DEI meeting and say, 'this is nonsense.' The people who do that, they have my deepest admiration," he said, referring to training in diversity, equity and inclusion.

Conservative Brands

Less controversial than boycotts, some conservatives are launching products to compete with the big brands.

The Daily Wire, for example, launched a brand of shaving equipment and a brand of chocolate bars, both after claiming that Harry's Razors and Hershey's displayed their adherence to wokeness for transgender references in advertising.

And Seth Weathers, a former director of Trump's 2016 Georgia campaign, said he is launching Conservative Dad's Ultra-Right Beer, a "100 percent woke-free beer" to compete with Bud Light.

Cahaly said Snapple's relationship with the late radio host Rush Limbaugh decades ago was an early example of conservatives flexing their muscles as consumers, even if it ended rather hastily.

"When he advertised that brand, it took off. It got so big, they pushed him out," he said. "The right is looking for places to go, and they don't want to spend their money on agendas they don't like."

While the right has a growing list of companies it deems too woke to support, the left has much longer-standing efforts against the likes of Hobby Lobby, the UFC and WWE, Coors parent Molson Coors, Shell Oil, Goya Foods, Chick-fil-A, New Balance, Lending Tree, the Las Vegas Sands/Venetian hotels and many more whose management appears to have supported anti-progressive policies, Trump or other Republicans.

Trans activists are also up in arms over JK Rowling, who has said many times that the transgender movement is an attack on women and whose world-famous Harry Potter books are reportedly going to be turned into a TV series at the HBO Max streaming service.

"Dreadful news, which I feel duty bound to share. Activists in my mentions are trying to organise yet another boycott of my work, this time of the Harry Potter TV show," Rowling said recently in a tongue-in-cheek comment: "As forewarned is forearmed, I've taken the precaution of laying in a large stock of champagne."

Not surprisingly, Fox News is arguably the primary target of left-wing boycotters who have for years been telling advertisers to avoid buying commercial time on its shows. But the network's Sean Hannity has repeatedly spoken against boycotts, once even telling fans who were smashing their Keurig coffeemakers after the company yanked its ads from his show to stop doing so. He revealed he owned several of Keurig's machines.

"Hannity has been a victim of cancellation, so I respect him for that," said Cahaly. "The most important point we're learning is that the left wants to push its issues in every aspect of society while the right wants non-political spaces — like sports, weather, theme parks and drinking a beer."