Shakedowns

So, Republicans are, or have been, critical of Obama for his "shakedown" of BP that produced the $20 billion escrow fund. (They stopped being after Joe Barton made a po-otohp (bad photo-op) about the subject.) To me, the fact that they are critical in this manner is an instance of their letting their guard down and exposing a dirty little secret of their philosophy. Here's the logic:

We have a situation where a company, BP, agreed to pay $20 billion to do a good deed.  I think we can all agree that this is a good deed. In this situation, we also know that there is no legal mechanism by which the U.S. government could have, or did, compel BP to pay this money. There are, I think, two basic possibilities about what happened: first, that BP decided to pay this money essentially out of the kindness of their hearts, or second, that the Obama people used some kind of threats to "force" them to pay up. The Republicans are, or were, acting like Possibility #2 is the only possible explanation. But think what this means: in order for that position to make sense, there has to either be specific evidence that BP didn't just want to do some good after having done a whole lot of bad, or a general presumption that corporations don't ever want to do good. I don't think I've heard any specific evidence that BP didn't want to do this good deed (if anyone has any, that undermines my argument), which suggests that Republicans are operating on the assumption that corporations do not want to do good deeds, and that corporations do not actually have any social conscience.

They don't like to admit that, though, do they? I would think that most people, if you convinced them that this idea is true, would take a fairly anti-corporate, pro-regulation stance. I should also add that I think this also means Republicans think corporations shouldn't have a social conscience, because people who wish corporations did have a desire to do good but believe that they don't would probably like a $20 billion shakedown of BP, which the GOP clearly doesn't. So the honest belief of those who wish for corporations to be essentially unregulated by the government of/by/for the people is that those corporations do not have any desire to do good, and that this is a good state of affairs. That sounds to me like they aren't playing the game in good faith: that is, they don't really believe that deregulation is good for society, but just that it's good for the corporations themselves.

A further note: here's one way you know the Republicans just can't comprehend the idea of a company's willingly doing good. Wouldn't it be a great PR move for the pro-corporate movement to make a big show out of how this supposedly evil mega-company had, of its own free will, given $20 billion to do a good deed? Couldn't they release a statement commending BP for its social conscience? Wouldn't that make their position look more plausible? Instead, they automatically assumed that corporations are just greedy and wicked, which would undermine their position if they weren't basically on the side of those greedy, wicked companies in the first place.