Okay, so Samuel Alito apparently believes that there is no basis to take away the individual states’ rights to decide whether abortion is legal or whether gay people can marry. I’ve seen some theorize that if this vision of the future comes to pass, there’ll be a major negative impact on those states that rule conservatively on these issues, based on things like, IIRC, Coca Cola reacting to some of Georgia’s recent moves. But is that really the case? I mean, if Georgia banned abortion, same sex marriage, and transgender people tomorrow, Coke might make some rumblings about moving, but would they, really?
So I’m not wondering if people would suffer, and if legal nightmares would erupt; I think both would be self-evident. But what I wonder is, would red states actually receive any sort of negative consequence if they were to move in the way many fear, economically or otherwise? Or would the majorities in their states keep them going, and business and federal government alike would do business as usual?
It would help us consumers if we were better equipped to know what our purchase dollars were funding. I certainly avoid buying from companies that I think are hurtful, especially when it is Coke versus Pepsi easy to do so.The consequences of making a purchase go beyond somebody handing you the product, and as the US gets more divided, as we gradually function more and more as enemies, there will be big market forces helping educate and enable consumers. Likely, some companies will deliberately throw in their lot with the old Confederacy, reasoning that their western style clothing, pickup trucks, or firearms will sell so much better that way that it’ll be worth it. And other companies (a larger fraction I think) will throw in with the old Union, and tend to get my dollars.
This is not to say the effect will be strong enough to make the difference. But I bet it would be noticeable to the companies.
In the short term, there may be some consequences as you speculatively describe.
In the long term, the red states will use their structural advantages to expand their program nationally. They will use imbalanced representation, voter suppression, and every other tool they have available to secure control of the federal apparatus and impose their agenda from the top down. In the long term, blue state and red state will not be meaningful; California and New York may be able to elect their D governors and legislatures, but when it comes to social issues like abortion and gay marriage, financial matters like tax policy and climate change response, and other items like education, the D-led states will be entirely constrained by superseding federal law, written and enacted by the red minority.
Then there will be no more blue states in any practical sense. There will only be a red country, governed by the American Baathist party. And with no material difference from state to state beyond the immutability of geography, businesses will do what they do: business.
Don’t be misled by the “states’ rights” rallying cry. It is not an abstract ideological stance out from which conforming policy may be developed. It is a practical cudgel used by red states to beat back perceived attempts by blue-state politicians to tell them what to do. The instant red states have the power to dictate terms to the blue states, “states’ rights” will be forgotten.
Then its time to beat them while we can. An executive order to move all military installations into blue states. It’s time we take the dangerous toys away from those mentally challenged confederates.
Yep. It will be their states’ right to say what will apply to everyone. I don’t give credence to any claim to the contrary.
And that will include penalizing any boycott-and-divest action. Almost surely some law along the lines that any private citizen can sue those who engage in that. Coca-Cola or Delta leave Georgia? Sue them! Sue the movers! Sue the board in their personal character!
The Republicans are the ones who started this culture war and, largely, have been the only ones fighting it. Corporations which don’t really have a huge “public face” will be able to play both sides as they always have, but the ones that pride themselves on enthusiastic customer bases are going to have to decide which group of enthusiasts they want to appeal to.
It would be interesting to see what happens if some of them decided to flex.
Even in heavily gerrymandered states, low voter turnout is the primary means by which parties stay in power. If Coca Cola decided to spend an election cycle going all-in on ‘get out the vote’ efforts and supporting challengers in vulnerable districts, they could absolutely punish the GOP in Georgia. Likewise for Disney in Florida.
An angle I’m not hearing explored: I think the Republicans wouldn’t want to outlaw abortion everyplace, or outlaw other much needed freedoms, because if they succeed then the voters that they had riled up are no longer riled up. This was all to get votes and, therefore, power and money. Other than the few Evangelicals, I doubt many Republican politicians care about abortion beyond making sure it’s available for them and theirs.
Roe v Wade has been a very successful GOP bogeyman for a long time, but I think its time was drawing to a close anyway. There are shiny new stars in that constellation: the various flavors of anti-"woke"ness (CRT, university indoctrination, woke corporations, etc) seem to be getting quite a lot of traction and generating lots and lots of self-righteous indignation. And the anti-LBGT cruelty is doing quite a lot of lifting, too.
Congress has all the practical power over the peacetime military. Basing decisions are acts of Congress. Everything in a military budget is congressionally approved, and nothing happens unless it’s budgeted and appropriated. Even senior military commanders have to be approved by the Senate.
“Executive order” is usually spouted by people who don’t understand the limits of executive power in the US Federal system. The President doesn’t get to do anything besides what Congress (the “representative of the people’s will”) tells him to do.
Probably not that many. This is a victory over the wicked so far as they’re concerned, not a blow to body autonomy. Restricting abortion is about punishing the wicked and the immoral. If it was anything else, the GOP would have spent the last 50 years supporting common-sense efforts to reduce unwanted pregnancies, support new parents, and eliminate poverty.
Most people don’t realize that knocking down Roe on the basis that a constitutional right to privacy does not exist will also knock down decisions on contraception, same-sex marriage, homosexual acts, assorted heterosexual acts, mixed-race marriage, and adultery. All those decisions, as I understand them, are founded on privacy.
How long till the conservatives come screaming back to SCOTUS to protect their privacy when they are criminally charged for getting a blow-job from their mistress?
People care about states’ rights only when the feds pass laws that restrict them. All those southern states’ righters before the civil war were all in favor of the fugitive slave law that overrode some northern state laws that outlawed forcible return of escaped slaves. This view of states’ rights continues today.
I have no doubt that were there a sufficiently motivated federal executive who wished to press the issue, those laws would indeed be found to supersede, and the state experiments in legalization would evaporate. But for a variety of complex political reasons, no president in the new era of legalization has chosen to take this on.
I trust we can agree that future right-wing administrations will not be similarly lacking in motivation to enforce their red-meat social-issue crackdowns. And then, yes, they will turn their attention to cannibis as well.
I’m not so sure. Taking the most recent example, it is possible that once in power, their actual approach to these sorts of things would be to half-arse it. Getting the votes seems to be the thing, not actually doing what the voters elected them for.