Elections are great focus groups. Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter knows that he’s got a bunch of people who instead of knocking doors for Mitt Romney will order his products just to show “support” for him in his crusade to sell crap pizza and not give his workers health care:

More than 17,000 Facebook users plan to eat at the pizza chain on Friday to support the company’s founder and CEO, John Schnatter, who has said President Barack Obama’s health care reform law will cause prices to jump by 11 to 14 cents per pizza, and has said employee hours may be scaled back.

So, when you actually look at the real cost, it’s less than that:

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Papa John’s sells exactly half medium/half large specialty pizzas. Averaging the ranges for both sizes, then averaging that product yields a .86% price increase — well outside the range of what Schnatter says Obamacare will cost him.

So how much would prices go up, under these 50/50 conditions, if they were to fairly reflect the increased cost of doing business onset by Obamacare? Roughly 3.4 to 4.6 cents a pie.

In September, the company announced that it would be giving away 2 million free pizzas. That was, of course, a promotion designed to increase brand awareness and to invite consumers to try the brand — with the ultimate goal of selling more pizzas. Those giveaways can’t really be cataloged alongside sales that would have been made otherwise. But just in case you’re curious, that would be the equivalent of $24 million to $32 million in pizza revenue.

source: Breaking Down Centi-Millionaire ‘Papa’ John Schnatter’s Obamacare Math – Forbes.

In the short term, It’s a win win for Schnatter. He can play the aggrieved millionaire businessman who has been set upon by HHS thuggery and get these events thrown for him by tea baggers who want to protect him from the wrath of adding health care benefits for his full time workers. On the flip side, most of his customers don’t really give a damn about this and it won’t impact Papa John’s sales as if you eat Papa John’s you probably don’t give a f*ck if your pizza taste good or not. He makes a grand principled stand without standing to lose much.