The Patriot Post® · It's Time for Conservative-Led Boycotts

For the longest time — for decades now — we conservatives have blithely ignored the boycott game. We paid little attention when Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/Push coalition shook down Anheuser-Busch and Coca-Cola for millions in the early 1980s, and we’ve watched the Left work to perfect the corporate boycott in the years since.

While the Left tends to ruin everything it touches — in this case, by bringing politics into it — we on the Right have been more principled. Boycotts have always rubbed us the wrong way, because while we might disagree with certain companies’ political leanings, we’re still inclined to reward them for making a superior product — whether an ice cream or a coffee or a car. Put another way: We just want to have a Coke or jump a flight or enjoy a ballgame.

This approach, though, no longer seems tenable. Republicans, once the business-friendly party of corporate America, have been getting their clocks cleaned in campaign fundraising and spending in recent election cycles, and this will only get worse if conservatives allow it to. Corporations, generally, are anything but courageous. Rather, they’re pragmatic; they take the path of least resistance. And the path of least resistance right now is clearly that of appeasing the loud, angry, energetic, organized, boycott-crazy Left.

Donald Trump, for one, has seen enough. On Friday, he took issue with Major League Baseball’s cowardly and ill-informed boycott of Georgia, which was scheduled to host this year’s All-Star Game and annual draft. “Baseball is already losing tremendous numbers of fans,” he said, “and now they leave Atlanta with their All-Star Game because they are afraid of the Radical Left Democrats who do not want voter I.D., which is desperately needed, to have anything to do with our elections. Boycott baseball and all of the woke companies that are interfering with Free and Fair Elections. Are you listening Coke, Delta, and all!”

By late Saturday night, though, the former president had cast a wider net. As The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra reports, “Trump encouraged people late on Saturday evening to boycott companies and organizations that are caving to the political left. The former president made the statement just days after Major League Baseball announced that it was moving the All Star Game and Draft out of Atlanta, Georgia, following democratically-elected Georgia officials’ vote to enact a comprehensive new law aimed at securing the state’s elections.”

Trump then did what he has a genius for: boiling matters down to their essence.

“For years,” he said, “the Radical Left Democrats have played dirty by boycotting products when anything from that company is done or stated in any way that offends them. It is finally time for Republicans and Conservatives to fight back — we have more people than they do — by far! Boycott Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, JPMorgan Chase, ViacomCBS, Citigroup, Cisco, UPS, and Merck. Don’t go back to their products until they relent. We can play the game better than them.”

Game on?

We on the Right have historically eschewed boycotts, but perhaps this is exactly what’s been missing: A highly influential spokesman to organize the masses and lead a charge that will be felt deeply and conspicuously by its weak-kneed targets.

Donald Trump might not know it yet, but mobilizing the Right and leading conservatives into the Boycott Wars could be the most important thing he does during his post-presidency.