This Republican about-face is so much worse than ‘cancel culture’

In other states, such as Georgia, GOP politicians have punished private companies for taking supposedly “woke” stands on issues such as gun violence. Republicans in Congress have likewise tried to use antitrust enforcement and other government levers to punish companies whose public stances on voting rights or internal policies on content moderation they dislike. This approach to governance was expertly modeled by Donald Trump, who as president frequently used the power of the state to reward friends and punish perceived political enemies. He did this through tax law, tariff policy and other proposed subsidies that chose winners and losers according to their political allegiances. He selectively enforced energy policies, such as allowing offshore drilling, to dole out favors to friends. He allegedly attempted to block a government contract to Amazon because its founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Post; he also tried to raise the prices the retail giant pays for U.S. Postal Service shipping. He launched a bogus antitrust investigation into car companies that had opposed his lax emissions standards. He threatened to revoke the “licenses” of broadcast media firms whose coverage he disliked. And that’s not getting into all the times he tried to weaponize his presidency to prosecute or otherwise punish politicians and private citizens (rather than companies). At the time, these behaviors might have seemed like an aberration from standard GOP rhetoric and policy, the ravings and abuses of a would-be authoritarian leader. Occasionally his fellow Republicans even called Trump out on these command-and-control, Soviet-style efforts to intervene in markets and curb free enterprise. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/04/republicans-embrace-trumps-approach-using-power-bully-opponents/?tid=ss_tw