Corporate Sanctimony

In a column in the Wall Street Journal Karl Rove highlights the hypocrisy of our corporate CEOs - particularly Robert Manfred of Major League Baseball - in objecting to the Georgia voting reforms. It's a wonder that after columns like this any of them still wish to continue embarrassing themselves by persisting in their sanctimonious condemnations of the Georgia effort to protect their election integrity.

Here are some excerpts from Rove's piece:

Major League Baseball’s offices are located in Manhattan and the commissioner, a native of Rome, N.Y., lives in the Empire State. Why is that relevant? Georgia has no-excuse absentee voting by mail, but New York state doesn’t....Where’s Mr. Manfred’s crusade to ensure that Yankees and Mets players and fans and baseball staff in New York ... have the same voting rights as Georgians?

Similarly, Georgia has a robust early-voting period, expanded by the new law to 17 days, with two optional Sundays. New York has only eight days of early voting, while neighboring Connecticut and New Jersey have none. You’d think the woke commissioner would speak out against these “restrictions to the ballot box,” but you’d be wrong.

If Mr. Manfred’s concerns were authentic, he’d condemn states such as Missouri, which has two major-league teams — the Royals and the Cardinals — but doesn’t allow no-excuse absentee voting or early voting. But he won’t.

There’s no early voting in Michigan, so you’d think he’d work to ensure every Tiger fan “participates in shaping the United States,” which he said he wants for “everyone.” But again, he won’t.

Ohio and Pennsylvania each have two pro baseball teams, yet neither state has early voting. Minnesota has the Twins and Wisconsin the Brewers, yet no early voting. While Massachusetts allowed no-excuse vote by mail in 2020 because of the pandemic, it expires June 30....When will Mr. Manfred speak out against all this voter suppression?

Or is Georgia the only state worthy of his condemnation?

Sen. Marco Rubio slammed Mr. Manfred in a letter Monday, asking if he’d remain a member of the exclusive Augusta National Golf Club, since it is located in Georgia; end baseball’s profitable engagement with China and Cuba, which certainly don’t hold free elections; and terminate the major leagues’ “lucrative financial relationship” with Tencent, a Chinese company with close ties to the Communist Party.

The commissioner has yet to respond.

Rove might also have mentioned that in moving the All-Star game from Atlanta to Denver, Mr. Manfred transferred over $100 million in revenue from a city that's 51% black to a city that's only 9% black. That seems like a strange way to demonstrate concern for Georgia's black citizens.

He goes on:

Mr. Manfred isn’t the only hypocritical CEO. Speaking from his Atlanta headquarters, Delta’s Ed Bastian ripped into Georgia’s law, but he, too, won’t castigate other states with more-restrictive voting laws.

Delta flies into Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia, none of which have no-excuse absentee voting; Iowa, Montana, Oklahoma and South Dakota, which don’t offer early voting; and Indiana and Mississippi, which have neither no-excuse absentee nor early voting.

Apparently Mr. Bastian sees no need to insult every state he does business in, just his home base.

Mr. Rove has more at the link.

Americans can all be proud of our Woke corporate CEOs whose unswerving commitment to social justice is unfettered by any similar commitment to logical consistency.