If cultural elites helped render certain left-wing views unacceptable in the 1940s, 1970s and 1980s, economic elites are helping render certain right-wing views unacceptable today. David Brooks foresaw this phenomenon fifteen years ago when he wrote Bobos in Paradise, arguing that corporate America was embracing the liberal cultural ethos of the 1960s. In 2003, Intel, Merck, and Boeing all filed briefs urging the Supreme Court to uphold affirmative action in college admissions. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs, Google, and Coca Cola urged the Court to legalize same-sex marriage. In South Carolina, the state’s chamber of commerce and manufacturer’s association lobbied Governor Nikki Haley to remove the Confederate Flag. And since Trump’s comments about undocumented Mexican immigrants, he’s faced harsher retribution from many of the corporations he does business with than from the Republicans he’s running against. If Democratic Party leaders once needed liberal intellectuals to marginalize Wallace and McGovern’s views about communism, Republican leaders need corporate America to marginalize the anti-gay rights, anti-Mexican, pro-Confederate Flag wing of their party today.
Eventually, they’ll probably succeed. By 2020, it’s hard to imagine a Republican nominee who doesn’t back gay marriage, comprehensive immigration reform and an end to government displays of the Confederate Flag.
So what happens to the millions of Americans who have suddenly found their views deemed beyond the pale by America’s political, economic and cultural elites? If history is any guide, they’ll go underground.
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