Khanservatives, Whores, and Socialism

March 25, 2024

“Khanservatives” like Sen. Josh Hawley, Sen. J.D. Vance, and Rep. Matt Gaetz are throwing their lot in with FTC Chair Lina Khan, seeing her numerous (and failed) antitrust campaigns against large corporations as breaking the power of conservative’s DEI, climate-ESG and “woke” enemies in the corporate boardrooms. They also hope it will win Republicans news friends in labor. This trend is aptly encapsulated in Molly Ball’s and Brody Mullins’ Wall Street Journal piece today, which chronicles this trend, including obsequious treatment Lina Khan recently received at the Federalist Society.

This is insanity – it is an own goal – it is akin the scene in Blazing Saddles when Cleavon Little escapes a hanging by putting a gun to his own head. This tactic works in comedy. In real life, such a left-right coalition would radicalize antitrust in ways that would give regulators so much power over corporate boards that it would amount to socialism. Don’t take my word for it. Former Republican FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson is not shy about exposing the Marxist roots of progressive antitrust.

How does this work? Chair Khan wants courts to accept her radical expansion of antitrust law to include just about anything and everything. With a change in agency rules to give the FTC generous leeway to target any business deal the left regards as “unfair,” regulators will have so much power over corporate boards that every morning executives will be zooming Washington and asking how high to jump. Or donate to progressive Democrats. Or censor conservatives.

Conservatives are angry, and rightly so, about unfair content moderation and sometimes outright censorship of conservative views on social media. What isn’t penetrating the skulls of Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance and Matt Gaetz is that when progressive regulators impose so many ways to keelhaul businesses and individual executives, you will get more censorship of conservatives and more corporate boards that are permanently woke.

Khanservatives should recognize that Khan and her progressive antitrust allies are hellbent on remaking the economy in a socialist model. Khan loses her biggest cases in a strategic effort to find judges who will use their gavel to expand her powers and change the plain meaning of existing laws. Gaetz, who interviewed Khan on his Newsmax show, said conservatives “can’t be whores for big business and be the voice of the working class at the same time.” 

We can be the voice of business and workers by standing for the free market. Remember that? The consumer welfare standard gives us a legal theory compatible with free-market philosophy to punish large corporations that abuse their power, with the ultimate concern of doing what’s best for consumers. Ensuring robust competition – which we do have in this country – is the best way to create jobs and benefits for workers. But enabling one agency to impose rules that puts all of business in the thrall of the federal government is a recipe for socialism.

To paraphrase Matt Gaetz, why should any conservative whore for that?