Are only GOP dealerships being closed?
Mark Tapscott in the Washington Examiner here and here. From the first link:
Evidence appears to be mounting that the Obama administration has systematically targeted for closing Chrysler dealers who contributed to Repubicans. What started earlier this week as mainly a rumbling on the Right side of the Blogosphere has gathered some steam today with revelations that among the dealers being shut down are a GOP congressman and closing of competitors to a dealership chain partly owned by former Clinton White House chief of staff Mack McLarty.
A blog dedicated to the sbubject here.
Josh Painter at Redstate here, here and here.
Two Malkin posts, here and here. From the second post on MSM coverage:
A few quick points: I do think that eventually, the MSM will come around to investigating. If they find anything at all that confirms the politicizing of the process, they’ll either whitewash it, downplay it, or take credit for exposing it with little or no credit to the bloggers who first started digging. They’ll also ignore the fact that some of us early on have made the caveat from the start not to make too-broad claims.
McArdle links to Nate Silver:
Overall, 88 percent of the contributions from car dealers went to Republican candidates and just 12 percent to Democratic candidates. By comparison, the list of dealers on Doug Ross’s list (which I haven’t vetted, but I assume is fine) gave 92 percent of their money to Republicans — not really a significant difference.
There’s no conspiracy here, folks — just some bad math.
It shouldn’t be any surprise, by the way, that car dealers tend to vote — and donate — Republican. They are usually male, they are usually older (you don’t own an auto dealership in your 20s), and they have obvious reasons to be pro-business, pro-tax cut, anti-green energy and anti-labor. Car dealerships need quite a bit of space and will tend to be located in suburban or rural areas.
More when I find it.
UPDATE: James Joyner
UPDATE #2: More from Josh Painter at Redstate here and here
UPDATE #3: Michelle Malkin
Marla Singer at Zero Hedge
John Cole, linking to Singer
UPDATE #4: Michelle Malkin
UPDATE #5: Michelle Bachmann at Redstate
2 Comments
May 28, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Red state, Texas, to be hardest hit with Chrysler closings
I don’t know how to find political donation records to crossmatch, but Texas’ activity needs to be researched by someone who does.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/051509dnbuschryslerdealers.10e32a4.html
EXCERPTS:
May 14, 2009
Chrysler is planning to shut down more dealerships in Texas than in any other state – 50 of the 789 dealerships targeted for closure are in Texas.
• El Dorado Chrysler-Jeep in McKinney
• Frank Kent Dodge in Fort Worth
• Grubbs Chrysler-Jeep in Bedford
• Huffines Chrysler-Jeep in Denton
• McNatt Dodge in Denton
• Manuel Dodge in Richardson
• Tommy Manuel Chrysler-Jeep in Arlington
• Preston Chrysler-Jeep in Dallas
Chrysler dealerships aren’t the only ones scheduled to get bad news this week. General Motors Corp. says it is notifying 1,100 dealers that it will not renew their franchise agreements when they expire at the end of September of 2010.
May 30, 2009 at 9:24 pm
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