Of course, Karl Rove and the rest of the Right Wing Outrage Machine took that to be political. Probably because they were pushing back in 2008 and 2009 to take Chrysler (and GM) into Chapter 7 and dismember both companies,[1] throwing millions of more people out of work.[2]
That didn't happen because two American presidents[3] stood up to the Randistas and called "bullshit" on a cabal of fools who were willing to destroy a major chunk of this country's industrial base, just because their ideology[4] told them to.
What Clint Eastwood had to say was this:
"There is no spin in that ad. On this I am certain. l am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama. It was meant to be a message about just about job growth and the spirit of America. I think all politicians will agree with it. I thought the spirit was OK."Except the professional Republicans don't want to see job growth. They want to see the country continue to slide down into a depression. At a time when thousands upon thousands of jobs were still being lost, the Republican (and minority) leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, pronounced that his party's number one objective was to make this president a one-term president.
Not "put Americans back to work". Not "Turn the economy around". Not "improve the educational system for America's youth". McConnell's sole objective for the last four years has been to destroy this president, to make it impossible to do anything that would help this country pull out of the Great Recession.
Once you realize that, then the Wingnut outrage over the Chrysler ad makes complete sense.
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[1] No doubt that Bain and Mitt the Cylon would have figured out how to make an obscene profit on that catastrophe.
[2] When you factor in all of the suppliers and sub-contractors that would have had to shut down, as a result.
[3] One of them being Rove's boss.
[4] As well as their pathological hatred of the idea that anyone doing a blue-collar job could be a member of the middle class.
8 comments:
One of your better rants, and so damned true it hurts.
I was wondering if the President would ever get any gratitude from Detroit. This will do nicely.
I don't say this lightly or often but to find anything wrong in such a patriotic ad seems un American, and all the flag lapel pins in the world won't cover that Stink.
w3ski
Joe, remember that Obama has to share the credit for the bailout with Bush.
Beside, acknowledging that a Republican president bailed out Detroit makes the Wingnuts' heads explode.
Rove didn't just call it "political", he actually suggested the Obama Administration had a hand in writing and producing the ad. Yeesh.
A Slate article says, "By playing on the themes of American greatness during a presidential election year, they're necessarily embracing political themes." Appeals to nationalist sentiment are a part of every political campaign, but for this to come out in an ad, NOT just about some abstract feelings but about actual markets and manufactured goods -- IN DETROIT! -- that is dangerously subversive for the GOP message about unions, coded racism, and the need for a change to "take back America". The ad is about something real (GM is now the largest automaker) and it does NOT indicate any radical change is needed for the US to move ahead. All we have to do is get up and pull together, says an American icon (& registered Republican).
It should be a perfectly good uplifting message about the US, and really, it IS. But that's a very very bad message for the GOP, who need to link the theme of American greatness with absence, longing, past and future. Any and every time but NOW is their message about American greatness.
The Chrysler ad tells a story of success that flies in the face of the GOP narrative about the need to break up unions, dissolve pensions, hire workers at lower wages, etc. for companies like GM to succeed.
A guy writing as Justin posted this in the Slate comments regarding Romney's declaration that a managed bankruptcy was the way to go:
"Romney was right. A managed bankruptcy would have allowed several people with the right connections to make a bundle of money by unloading the pension liabilities on the gov't, spinning off high-value portions of the business, cutting the workforce and letting the state unemployment fund take the hit, and cramming down the labor contracts for the workers who remained. The resulting companies would have been worth a fortune on the market. The vast sums of profit made by the insiders, consultants, underwriters, lawyers, etc., would enrich those individuals to the point at which they could actually become Job Creators for this country, a concept lost upon the Socialists who are in league with Obama to destroy America."
Uhm, except it *was* a managed bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler. The current GM and Chrysler are entirely new corporations created from the best assets of the old GM and Chrysler, which then declared Chapter 13 and dissolved themselves, with the stakeholders and bondholders in the old GM and Chrysler getting a piece of the new company proportional to their stake. This is 100% identical to what Chapter 11 would have accomplished -- Chapter 11 usually includes a cramdown and shedding of unproductive parts of the company too -- it just would have taken longer, and the industry didn't have time to wait for Chapter 11 to wend its course thru bankruptcy court. (As it was, the much-simpler Chapter 13 procedure didn't manage to wend its way through the bankruptcy courts until over a year after the new GM and Chrysler were born). There was nothing "unmanaged" about the GM/Chrysler bankruptcy, and there most decidely *was* a bankruptcy, complete with an emergency decree by the bankruptcy court allowing the productive parts of the old companies to be sold to the new companies in exchange for stock in the new companies.
It's astounding -- and appalling -- that Romney would write this set of events right out of history. If he truly believes there was no GM and Chrysler bankruptcy, he's as delusional as any inmate in an insane asylum who proclaims himself to be the real Elvis.
As for Rove, he's a toad. Of course he hates the commercial. His tactics of fear and despair work only if people are, well, fearful and despair for the future. A message of optimism is to people like Karl Rove what garlic is to vampires. So it goes.
- Badtux the Halftime Penguin
BadTux, you might have missed that I did not use the word "bankruptcy". I wrote "Chapter 7", which, as you know, is the business equivalent of running a corporation through a slaughterhouse.
The Republican ideologues did not want a reorganized GM or Chrysler. They wanted those companies shuttered and all of those unionized workers thrown out on the street. In order to punish the UAW, the GOP stalwarts were willing to throw this country into Great Depression II.
Of the many thing which I hold against the modern GOP, that one is, in my view, the most egregious.
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