The GOP Turns Against Big Institutions. NewsWire

NewsWire: 9/10/21

• Republicans’ views of most institutions, including big business, have plunged in just two years. The only institution that still has the approval of a solid majority is the church. (Pew Research Center)
• NH: In 2019, the majority of Republicans had positive views of many major institutions, including churches, banks, large corporations, and tech companies. But their views have since taken a sharp negative turn. While churches still rank highly (with 76% approval), nothing else does.
• In some cases, approval has fallen by more than 20 percentage points. The share of Republicans who say large corporations “have a positive effect on the way things are going in the country” has fallen from 54% to 30%. For tech companies, it’s gone from 58% to 38%. For banks, it’s slipped from 63% to 50%.

• Democrats, in contrast, have grown more sanguine about major institutions over this period. The majority say that churches (52%), tech companies (63%), labor unions (74%), colleges and universities (76%), and K-12 schools (77%), have a positive effect. Though Democrats are still less likely than Republicans to see churches positively, the gap has narrowed since 2019.

• What explains Republicans' dour outlook? The most obvious political difference between 2019 and today is who’s in the White House--which, as we’ve often pointed out, is more influential than ever in shaping how voters perceive the world. (See “If You Love Trump, You Think the Economy is Strong. If Not, Not.”) Bluezoners are more inclined to be optimistic under a Biden presidency.
• But there’s more going on here. These results also reflect the ongoing transformation of the GOP from pro-business to populist. The party is losing higher-income, more educated voters and gaining among those without a college degree, which is pushing the GOP further out of the mainstream. Even GOP support for churches may have less to do with religion or established denominations than with church groups as a tribal gathering place for Americans with redzone values. (The argument that Trump  and Trump supporters don't especially care much about religion is made at length by Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry in Taking America Back for God.)
• As for the large decline in approval of large corporations and tech companies, this has been driven by the rising number of big corporations taking a more progressive line on social issues. Approval of colleges and universities was already low among Republicans for the same reason. As a result, the traditional alliance between the GOP and big business is looking more and more like a divorce. If corporate America is expecting the GOP to come to its aid on tax or antitrust policy, it may be unpleasantly surprised.
• Case in point: Both antitrust cases pending against Google and Facebook, now being supported aggressively by the Biden team, were originally filed while Trump was still president with the support of many Republican state AGs. This April, it was conservative Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) who unveiled his “trust-busting” plan around the same time that progressive Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced hers. In June, several GOP congressmen voted in favor of six antitrust bills coming out of the House Judiciary Committee--over the negative votes of California Democrats.
• That's right: Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos need to be looking out for pitchforks coming at them both ways, from the left and the right.