The Republican war on baseball just got even stupider

| 10:33 pm EDT April 18, 2021
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You may have heard that Major League Baseball (MLB), has pulled its July All-Star game from Atlanta as a response to the Georgia Legislature’s passage of new laws aimed at suppressing the rights of minority voters under the false guise of “election integrity.” The game instead will be played in Denver, Colorado, a state that coincidentally has very inclusive and progressive voting laws, including at-will voting by mail for all.

Some Trumpublican senators are attempting to punish Major League Baseball by introducing this past week a bill to eliminate the MLB’s special antitrust exemption, which has been in existence since the 1920’s. The bill has been co-sponsored by the usual QAnon Party suspects: Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Mike Lee. They make no pretenses in stating the intent behind the bill is a response to the MLB’s protest action against Georgia’s new draconian voter laws.

The “Cruz-Hawley-Lee Antitrust Beanball Act” as I label it, is another strike by Republicans against big corporations taking progressive stances on social justice, voters’ rights, and other causes. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell started the ball rolling with his shrill declarations that big corporations should stay out of politics (but keep donating to Republican candidates). Moscow Mitch later backtracked on his remarks, but he can count on his Insurrectionist Party colleagues to keep pitching the Big Lie of voting irregularities in blue and purple states.

Since the Republicans are now the minority party, this bill has an unlikely chance of passage, unless Crazy Uncle Bernie Sanders joins in the anti-MLB parade; Forbes is suggesting that he might. Perhaps he will be reminded by Democrats that the Republicans are in effect attacking a large entity that is protesting minority vote suppression and employs many players and employees of color and diverse nationalities from every continent except Antarctica. That’s right out of the Trumpublican playbook.