Talking Points Memo

Friday, March 3, 2023

THE WEEKLY READ

This edition of The Weekly Read is an excerpt from TPM's Morning Memo – our daily newsletter from David Kurtz which he describes accurately as "more bonbon than broccoli." If you haven't already subscribed, it's completely FREE to do so, and we promise you won't regret it.

If you're already a Morning Memo subscriber (thank you!) and were hoping for a weekly dose of TPM reporting, we suggest you read Josh Kovensky's article on Texas Gov. Greg Abbot following in Trump's ridiculous footsteps by resurrecting the border wall.

A taste: "It's a 1,200 mile border," Tiefer, the law professor and of counsel at Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca, laughed. "Someone who wanted to cross the border would need a GPS to find the wall, not to get around it."

The Republican Culture War Playbook

It's Time To Stop Calling It The 'Culture Wars'

Republicans have gone to their reliable playbook: turn something into a "partisan" issue in order to undermine consensus, put an issue or constellation of issues off-limits, and exploit the fearfulness of controversy-averse institutions and corporations.

The latest target is ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) — a term that generally applies to climate/socially conscious investment.

The Senate passed a resolution Wednesday to rollback a Labor Department rule that makes it okay for investment managers to consider ESG (if that rule sounds pretty tepid, it is). Democratic Sens. Jon Tester (MT) and Joe Manchin (WV) crossed the aisle to help pass the anti-ESG resolution.

Biden has threatened a veto and is expected to follow through on the threat.

We talk about this stuff a lot as part of the "culture wars," but that bestows a legitimizing gloss on it, as if there is some deeper, truer cultural dispute. There's not. This a GOP tactic, and a highly effective one in part because media coverage still fails to get it. It gets treated like these things just happen, as if Democrats or Fortune 500 companies stumble into previously unseen cultural war ambushes because they lack a feel for flyover country.

Let me offer one example from a NYT story this week. Note the passive voice here:

The deck on the story reads: "The business world has been pulled into partisan politics, with Republicans bringing their battle against socially conscious investing to Congress."

The story quotes a consultant, again with the passive voice:

"E.S.G. has been caught in the culture war cross hairs in the U.S.," said Alexandra Mihailescu Cichon, executive vice president at RepRisk, a company that helps corporations track their E.S.G. goals. "It's become a liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican issue."

This doesn't just happen. Republicans and right-wing activists make it happen. They devote a lot of time, energy and resources to it. While I'm picking on media coverage, credit to the WSJ this week for reporting that Federalist Society notable Leonard Leo is behind an effort spending millions of dollars to target ESG. So real money, real resources. It's not passive.

By almost any measure, Republicans have already won once they've "made it a partisan issue." What seems to get misunderstood is that that's the actual goal. Corporations and institutions don't want to pick sides. They want to play it down the middle. So Republicans keep shifting the "middle" farther and farther right. By this point in these controversies, the game is basically over already.

What's maddening is that everyone keeps getting played.

We hope you enjoyed this article. And if you did, we hope you'll become a member. Our members make our reporting possible. 

Thanks for reading!

This email was sent to trongrau1368.tpmf@blogger.com

You've received it because you've subscribed to our newsletter.

Update your preference | Unsubscribe

PO Box #490 217 W 18th St, New York, NY 10011, United States

© 2022 TPM MEDIA LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED