Shortly after Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed Georgia’s new voter-integrity law on Thursday, the squeeze play against the southern state began, with a representative of the Major League Baseball Players Association suggesting players would support moving the summer’s all-star game from Atlanta.
That followed demands by the National Black Justice Coalition that the PGA Tour and Masters Tournament pull upcoming events from Augusta National Golf Course. Other activists are calling for boycotts against Georgia-based corporations Coca-Cola, Home Depot, and Delta for not denouncing the bill.
In making these boycott threats, however, the woke faction has ignored the lesson from Gov. Kristi Noem’s capitulation to the NCAA, Amazon, and the Chamber of Commerce: Conservatives aren’t gonna take it anymore.
When Noem returned H.B. 1217 to the South Dakota legislature for purported “style and form” changes that instead gutted the bill that would have banned men and boys from competing as women in elementary, secondary, and collegiate-level sports, the backlash was swift. Conservatives, including me, called out the Republican governor for caving to corporate interests. The more Noem twisted to justify her refusal to sign the law, the more apparent it became to conservatives that the Republican leader stood on a pedestal of sand.
Conversely, conservatives watched last week as Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed a similar bill banning males from women’s sports, including at the collegiate level—a protection Noem struck from the South Dakota bill. Whether Hutchinson feared attacks similar to those on Noem from the conservative base, or whether he is truly a leader with stronger footing and knees uncapable of buckling, is unclear. What is clear, though, is that due to a confluence of factors, post-2020 conservatives will no longer tolerate surrendering to the left.
First, there was Donald Trump—his ascent, governance, and ouster. Trump taught Republicans that the left and the media will never love you and that backing down merely makes you a bigger target.
The Brett Kavanaugh confirmation circus proved a perfect case study for conservatives on how to succeed when the press and politicians push false narratives. The success Republicans saw confirming Kavanaugh then allowed senators to better gird themselves when the battle moved on to the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.
Trump’s tactic of refusing to capitulate on even the smallest matter while bypassing the corrupt media proved successful across the board. From withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, to moving the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, to the reinstitution of the Mexico City policy and the signing of executive orders to address illegal immigration and protect religious liberty, Trump succeeded where previous politicians failed because he didn’t bend to public pressure premised on fake news.
While the 45th president’s defeat in 2020 might seemingly contradict this lesson, in reality it has emboldened conservatives to stand firm because we now realize the power the “news” and social media hold over our country. Corporate media’s burying of the Joe Biden pay-to-play corruption scandal exposed by the cache of text and emails discovered on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, coupled with Twitter’s deplatforming of the one legacy outlet covering the story, The New York Post, preordained Biden’s presidency.
The aftermath of the election, which included banning Trump and others from Facebook and Twitter, and Amazon Web Services deplatforming Parler, further cemented conservatives’ concerns over their voices being silenced: The purge triggered a now-or-never response from the right, with everyday Americans realizing that if we don’t speak out, push back, and stand firm now, soon we may not have the power to. Conservatives are now demanding the same from our political leaders, which is why Noem’s misstep will prove fatal to her political future.
2020 also provided Main Street a view of the future dystopia we will face if our leaders do not declare “America is not a company country.” Woke business, big tech, corporate media, and sports leagues do not hold veto power over legislation. They have no right to decide the truth of speech, to define male as female, or tell us what to think and what to believe.
The government’s autocratic and hypocritical response to COVID also awakened a populace content to live and let live, now realizing the government won’t. What grocery store aisle you can use, what businesses are essential, what houses of worship are not—these and other dictates taught conservatives both that our leaders are power-hungry and that many of our fellow citizens are sheep.
COVID likewise gave election officials an excuse to ignore state laws designed to protect the integrity of elections. Yet the forces of the left now demand that Georgia abandon any efforts to ensure the chaos of 2020 does not repeat itself. But they are doing so with pre-2020 tactics.
Of course, there is no certainty at this point that Georgia politicians will stand strong, but what is more assured is that if they buckle based on the false narratives from the left about the state’s new voting-integrity law, they will experience the wrath of a right no longer willing to surrender.
