For the past four years, after initially sucking up to Obama when he was popular while crapping on him and his proposals when he wasn't in the room, the essential Republican attitude has been "we need to take the country back to 100% Republican rule, and nothing that Obama proposes, including legislation that was previously proposed by Republicans, is alright because he touched it and now it has his cooties"; when Mitch McConnel said that the first priority of the Republican party was to make Obama a one-term president last year, overlooking our devastated economy, skyrocketing unemployment, or the two wars and tax cuts which created a crater where our economy used to be, he really, really wasn't fucking around. Because of this, Democrats haven't been able to break Republican filibusters on things like the Dream Act (formerly proposed as Republican legislation, and similar to the amnesty granted by Reagan), as well as blocking the funding or confirmation of heads for consumer protection agencies, such as Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, following on the heels of one of the biggest consumer clusterfucks in our nation's history orchestrated by crooked bankers, claiming that the biggest problem with our banking industry is excessive regulation (when every economist worth their salt says the opposite), making our government look worse than it has in a very long time, dragging Congress' approval rating to 12% largely because nothing can escape the black hole that is the Republican lock-step filibuster. They play the politics of "no" and are willing to play chicken with the economy, regulations, healthcare or any other political football they can find until Obama blinks like he did during the budget negotiations when they threatened to not pay America's bills that they themselves had helped to rack up. After all, is there any other way you can reconcile their heroic, unanimous blocking of the Zadroga bill, (followed up with them defunding the Zadroga bill when it was finally forced through by the Democrats) something which is more popular with the American public than the "give every orphan a puppy and a Christmas" bill, with them actually having a soul?
To be honest, a lot of decisionmakers within a corporation or industry could say that they as the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing, and hide behind limited liability unless something truly heinous is proved to be going on, at which point a court may do what's called "piercing the corporate veil" and ignore the corporation, treating the decisionmakers as human beings who are breaking laws instead of a group of people that are pretty damn hard to nail for doing anything, however, this doesn't happen often, and you can expect a corporation, an entity that exists only to maximize profits and minimize liabilities, will operate according to their fiduciary obligation every time. For those of us without a legal education, a fiduciary obligation translates into every decision maker in the corporation being legally obligated to act in the corporation's best interest. In fact, if it is found that they are acting otherwise, such as Ford when he tried to have an unprofitable plant opened to give jobs to a community in poverty, a shareholder (who could live anywhere and give his orders from Beijing, Tokyo, etc.) can take you to court to have your decision reversed. This happened to Ford, and, long story short, the shareholder stopped the plant from being built, screwing over the community that it would have helped to ensure his own dividends and establish a precedent just in case any other corporate CEO grew a heart. When Republicans argue for lower tax rates on corporations, that money very often goes to that same douche in whichever country he happens to be in, often escaping the U.S. economy altogether.
All in all, the Republicans have shown themselves to be the party of the rich, consistently benefitting the rich through deregulation and tax breaks. How they convince poor and middle-class, white midwesterners to consistently vote against their economic interest by flashing them with some Terry Schiavo-esque political smoke and mirrors is perhaps the greatest grift of the new millennium so far.