Consciously Sidelining Ourselves

Though Wal-Mart remains fixed in the American conscience as Sam Walton's business, it is less and less that. Walton was folksy and relatable to the Americans who shopped at Wal-Mart. Everyone could imagine Sam Walton shopping there, too. But over the years, Wal-Mart's management has passed out of the direct hands of Walton's family.

A few of the Walton clan remain on the Wal-Mart board of directors, but now its board also includes Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo!, and Kevin Systrom, the CEO of Instagram. One would be hard pressed to imagine either as regular shoppers at Wal-Mart. For that matter, former counselor to President George W. Bush, Dan Bartlett, is now the executive vice president of corporate affairs for Wal-Mart. It may be hard to imagine many of Wal-Mart's executive leaders being regular shoppers at Wal-Mart.

To his credit, Wal-Mart's CEO Doug McMillon started out as an hourly employee within the corporation. But in the last few years, Wal-Mart has seemed less and less the story of Americana and more and more the story of a group of elites posing as Americana.

In 2009, Wal-Mart championed Obamacare. In fact, Wal-Mart went so far as to sign a letter with the Service Employees International Union, a major player within Democrat politics. After Obamacare passed, Wal-Mart promptly declared it would no longer offer health insurance to many of its part-time employees.

Recently, Wal-Mart also led an effort to pass the so-called "Main Street Fairness Act," which is actually legislation that would allow states to tax the Internet. According to the Wall Street Journal, "The drivers of this rush to tax are Wal-Mart and other big retailers that can more easily absorb the costs of collection than can smaller competitors."

Wal-Mart has, over the years, become disconnected from its shoppers. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act has the support of a majority of Americans. In Arkansas, it was backed overwhelmingly by the public. But Wal-Mart has hitched its wagon to a left-leaning social agenda and intervened in Arkansas to try to kill its religious liberty legislation. Wal-Mart hopes its shoppers will not notice, and, even if they do, it is not like their shoppers can afford to go elsewhere.

That is, frankly, true. Wal-Mart has low prices and now has rolled out grocery stores in areas of the country closer to those who need low-priced groceries. But in doing so, Wal-Mart has an Achilles heel that its shoppers and supporters should consider.

Wal-Mart signed on to support Obamacare to keep unions at bay. When Wal-Mart enters a market, it is never conservatives or the poor who oppose Wal-Mart. It is inevitably rich liberal environmentalists and unions. More often than not, Wal-Mart's grassroots strategy is to turn to preachers and conservatives to lobby on the company's behalf.

When the environmentalist shows up to lament water runoff from all the paved surfaces in a Wal-Mart parking lot, Wal-Mart can send in a conservative to talk jobs, investment and increased tax revenue. When the union comes in to lament Wal-Mart's labor relations, Wal-Mart can send in the preacher to talk about the poor and the needs of the community. They have been quite effective.

Many conservatives, myself included, cancelled their account to Angie's List when the company came out vocally against religious liberty legislation. Its CEO was publicly critical of Christians. The financials of the company suggest it may not be long for the world. Wal-Mart also opposed religious liberty legislation, but did not when behind the scenes with lobbyists and letters, hoping the public would not notice.

Angie's List may be impacted by a boycott. Wal-Mart will never be hurt by a boycott, and a boycott would be silly anyway. But conservatives and pastors might want to remember the next time Wal-Mart asks them for help that Wal-Mart has no intention of reflecting their values or helping them. Time and time again, we help Wal-Mart only to see it back policies that hurt the middle class. We don't need to boycott Wal-Mart. But we don't have to help them grow. We can consciously sideline ourselves and let Wal-Mart figure out who its friends really are.

“Wal-Mart hopes its shoppers will not notice, and, even if they do, it is not like their shoppers can afford to go elsewhere.”

We noticed. We took the attack on Arkansas legislators personally, because it was literally personal. We know Target is pressing the socially destructive agenda too, but they never personally attacked me.

The author is wrong about walmart customers having no other place to go. I decided to compare prices at wally world with those at kroger and target about a year ago. Upshot is there really isn’t that much of a difference. And Kroger has actually gone out of its way recently to tell the gungrabbers to go pound sand.

Oh and if you have an Aldi. Walmarts prices are significantly higher!

So why go to walmart when the prices aren’t that good, the service stinks, they’re out of stock continually, and they actively oppose our values?

So why go to Walmart when the prices aren't that good, the service stinks, they're out of stock continually, and they actively oppose our values?

There are some areas where they've so out-maneuvered the competition that it's a prohibitive trip to get to competitors. Besides that, we aren't the shoppers that keep WalMart in business. It's invaders...non-discriminating shoppers, cheap labor competition, that rack up the ability to sell overpriced junk. And it's the low-quality foreign merchandise that WalMart contracts for....lower price to the supplier, thus lower quality of the product.

WalMart is capable of providing higher quality and value. They do it all the time when they're striving to destroy the competition.

Oh, and FWIW, Dollar General and some other similar stores have many higher quality items at lower proices. I won't shop at WalMart at all. For one reason, when I look at the quality of some of the consumers, I wonder about bringing the stuff they've touched into my home.

Funny you mention quality issues. I find that the quality of products like sunglasses are much better and much cheaper at the dollar stores.

While I realize that in some more rural areas Walmart is the only game in town, that’s not true in urban areas.

Absolutely agree that walmart is targeting the EBT demographic. That’s fine: they can have the thieves and those who are able to spend their day waiting in line. And what would we do without all the youtube videos of their customers being classy?

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