Apparently now the new meme du jour floating around the WingNet is that Chrysler dealerships were closed in such a manner as to punish Republicans. Anyone want to bet how this is going to turn out?
Also, I’ll just note that the same people now screaming about this were, just a few weeks ago, screaming about the sanctity of contracts trying to make sure that the bondholders would get their way and push Chrysler into bankruptcy and be liquidated and cause every single Chrysler dealership across the country to close. But it would hurt the UAW, so then it was ok.
Really just the most tedious people on the planet.
Tracy
Nate Silver is my Jesus.
The Grand Panjandrum
Fail Blog’s got you covered.
JohnR
For years now, they’ve reminded me of a flock of nervous domestic turkeys – frantically panicking over a cloud shadow and racing in a tight, scrambling mass to one side of the pen, only to panic over a passing crow and race back in a cloud of dust to where they started, losing a few to trampling and heart attacks on each hysterical sprint. Disclaimer: I have never yet seen any domesticated turkey, individually or in a group, as completely bereft of any sort of individuality or intellect as the present Republican leadership, whether political or mediaillogical.
Earl
Punishment is what they’re expecting if they voted for someone other than Obama. It’s the only way their lives make sense, after all.
Obviously these people cannot possibly be ignored…
Right?
They’re too important, right?
Bob In Pacifica
I once knew a Republican who drove a Chrysler, so it must be true. Just wait until they start shutting down the Buick dealerships.
FIrst they came for my LeSabre. Then…
jcricket
It’s because everyone/everything is seen in black/white us/them type terms – and thought about in terms of political advantage. They want reality to adjust to their political thinking, rather than the other way around.
This is why I’m pretty confident Democrats won’t fall into the same trap – we actually acknowledge the messiness of reality.
Balconesfault
I just love the commentor to Silver’s article who suggested that this was the perfect opportunity for all those good Republicans to Go Galt.
zzyzx
If it stopped, people wouldn’t have a reason to reload the blog endlessly and ad revenue would suffer.
El Cid
I guess this must mean that Obama gave tons of money to the Berkely Revolutionary Telegraph Avenue Chrysler Co-operative and the Madison (WI) Food Not Bombs Dodge Anarcho-Vehicalist Bloc.
MikeJ
Well yeah. if they were in charge, it’s exactly what they would have done, so of course they think the same of us.
Ted the Slacker
“Anyone want to bet how this is going to turn out?”
Well I will bet it will never completely go away. Birth certifiGate, anyone?
HARRY WEAVER
Using a little common sense, Chrysler is going to close the small dealerships serving a smaller population centers; keeping open the larger dealerships that exist in larger population centers. 90% of the dealerships in small locals (rural areas), serve an area dominated by Republicans. Generally the more urban areas aren’t dominated by the Republican party.
Napoleon
What is amazing is that anyone with 2 functioning brain cells would intuit that anyone who owns an auto dealership is highly likely to vote Republican. Did this just not occur to them, or it occurred to them and they figured they would not get called on it, or did they just not care.
Little Dreamer
Can you imagine what our reality would be now if McCain had won, and he were faced with the difficult choices Obama is having to make?
Can’t we just let them secede already and let them all go to Alaska where Palin can be their leader?
Zifnab
All this boils down to the fact that Carter raised CAFE standards in ’75, thus leading to the inevitably decline and destruction of the automobile industry in the United States.
This is everyone’s fault but Chrysler Management’s dontchaknow.
NewMexiKen
Yes, but I’m afraid the second most tedious people on the planet are those that point out what the first most tedious people on the planet are saying.
Evinfuilt
I love Nate Silvers war against unreality. It doesn’t even take much of a functioning brain to know that auto dealers are primarily republican anyways (and those that rely on Chrysler to keep their steady income prove their intelligence is low enough to be an R.)
Little Dreamer
@Napoleon:
They don’t care, plain and simple, they will say or do anything that they can to put egg on the faces of everyone who is not ideologically aligned to them.
They are like monkeys flinging poo.
flavortext
@Napoleon:
Yes.
thomas
John, what’s going on here? You’re looking for consistency? Are you crazy? Are pigs flying?
Senyordave
They are like monkeys flinging poo.
Little Dreamer,
As the representative for monkeys flinging poo, please do not insult my poo-flinging monkeys by comparing them to the RNC, Gingrich, Libaugh, et. al.
Napoleon
@Little Dreamer:
That is my opinion as well. It worked so well for them for so many years, much to my dismay, and I wonder (hope?) that a corner has been turned and now enough voters will not grant the right some kind of presumption of good faith (which is why they have gotten away with this for 35 years) and will actually think about what is being said so at some point they just have to quit this bs in order to have a chance to win elections.
GambitRF
I like the commenter there talking about how he used bad control groups because he searched for “car dealer” instead of “Chrysler dealer.” Firstly, “Chrysler dealer” doesn’t give any results in the search, secondly is there any real reason to believe that Chrysler would be substantially less Republican, other than the fact that wingnuts are trying to hold out hope on their ridiculous theory? That, and I just love the fact that wingnuts can throw out whatever weird, random shit comes to the top of their heads and start propagating it as if its the Word of God, but when someone tries to disprove whatever insane theory it is, suddenly stuff like “control groups” starts mattering.
camchuck
Its all part of the plan to turn (Real) America’s dealerships into FEMA re-education camps.
Face
Obama is the Anti-Chrys-ler
someguy
But c’mon. If it’s true, isn’t it just a teensy bit awesome? “I drink your milkshake, Republicans. I drink it up.”
Kicking them right square in the donors… That would rock. I kind of hope it’s one of those true-but-unproveable-in-court things. That would be the best of both worlds. The Republicans get screwed, they rant and rave about unproveable conspiracy theories, looking like jackasses in the process. Plus their plastic haired donors just plain disappear. Win-win-win, far as I’m concerned.
Legalize
I forget what commenter at what blog made this comparison, but I believe it is apt. Wingnut bloggers are like a litter of small yappy dogs that bark and piss all over the floor whenever a leaf blows by in the front yard. After they have made their noise and their mess, they proudly wag their tails and sniff each other’s butts for a day or two until the next poutrage blows by.
Little Dreamer
@Napoleon:
Unfortunately, to be someone who can both stay on top of all these antics to be aware of them, and have the ability to keep his/her head above water economically, means we would need to be cloned if not for the gift of the most biased media to have ever existed showing us that the crazy is acceptable to them. I guess we should thank our media, that in not doing their jobs, they are actually offering voters to see what the reality is, if one really pays attention.
Little Dreamer
@Legalize:
An apt comparison, but the puppies are cute and not anywhere near as annoying. ;)
ChrisB
@MikeJ:
Beat me to it. (Damn you, MikeJ!)
Anton Sirius
@Little Dreamer:
They’re more like very stupid monkeys trying to fling poo into a jet turbine, and then forgetting to duck.
Tsulagi
Aren’t they? Again, never passing up an opportunity to cry victim.
In my work we’ve had to weed out the nuttier wingnuts. Couldn’t afford them. How you could lose money on cost-plus contracts with DoD shoveling money out took exceptional effort and skill. But true to form, it wasn’t their repeated fuckups and incompetence that eventually pushed them out, they cried victim all the way out the door.
InflatableCommenter
Did somebody mention my family?
The Moar You Know
Goddamn, the “truthers” posting in that Silver article would win a gold medal in gymnastics if their posts could be translated to actual physical action.
Obama’s too much of a pragmatist to close dealers based on their donation history, although if he did I would think it was 100% awesome.
InflatableCommenter
It’s not bad, but I think the best analogy to the GOP that I’ve seen is one that a few of us have made in the last couple years: The Cargo Cult.
If you watch the RNC right now, they look just like a cargo cult in operation. A little like the natives who think that if they build a runway, large silver birds will come from the sky and bring them riches.
Ed in NJ
That blog Doug Ross @ Journal is hilarious. Pages and pages of “anecdotal” evidence based on their comment section. Loads of analysis of a statistically insignificant number of dealers. Then whenever someone asks if anyone has run the numbers on the dealerships staying open, they cop an attitude, saying they are too busy to do that, and it would be “defensive” on their part.
It’s as if they actively avoided doing a thorough investigation for fear it would not support their theory. And what fun would that be. Better to spend a day in outrage and look like fools than to not be outraged at all.
Anton Sirius
@someguy:
No, the best of both worlds would be that it wasn’t true, that it in fact never even occurred to anyone in the Obama administration to do something like that, but the Pubs work themselves up into a paranoid froth anyway and not only lose those car dealer donors but also drive (cough) another 1% of conservative voters into the independent camp with yet another lost battle in their War On Reality.
gypsy howell
Meh. Who cares if it is true? Elections have consequences, bitchezzzz.
If these d-bag dealership owners had pushed back even a teensy weensy bit against their republican corporate overlords at any time in the past 4 decades for greater fuel efficiency, better styling and better overall quality, then none of them would be in this mess to begin with. You vote republican, you get republican policy. Live with it.
I expect they’ll all be raving s o c i a l i s t s within a year anyway, once they have to fend for themselves in a world with no s o c i a l safety net – a world of their own selfish creation.
Little Dreamer
@InflatableCommenter:
No, your family contains Democrats, someone mentioned MY family. ;)
rreay
Wow. Redstate is showing their paranoia. Someone posted this link and got banned for it.
Moe says: “I could care less about the sensibilities of a three-year sleeper account holder.” If you think people made accounts 3 years ago to fuck with you when the time is right and that that time is now you might have a problem.
Cat Lady
I think this is going to turn out about the same way as tying the stock market to Obama’s every utterance.
More Obama fu, is what this is, because he doesn’t have to do anything to mess with them (although I love the fantasy that this could be a master plan to bankrupt Republican donors). The wingtards have rendered themselves so irrational, hysterical, impotent and irrelevant in 4 short months, they’ll be able to hold their next convention in the back seat of a Chrysler.
Little Dreamer
@rreay:
The comment that link pointed to apparently has been removed from Redstate, it seems they are embarrassed by their own hypocrisy and instead of admitting it, they are going to act as if it was never written.
gypsy howell
If just one republican dealership gets closed (which of course it will) that will be proof enough to them of their thesis. Really, what’s the point of arguing with them? Better they should fear it’s true.
Dennis-SGMM
Off the Map plots Chrysler dealership closings by state and region and then attempts to correlate them with various other factors including local unemployment rates. It’s a nice, thorough, piece of work that concludes that there’s no correlation based on available data.
rreay
@Little Dreamer: Still there, but the direct link seems busted. Look for commenter sukwoo
joe from Lowell
Hmm…let me see…I think the Republicans are going to spend several days running around a making a lot of noise about this, while Barack Obama stays calm. Within a week or two, this argument will have completely vanished, like a stone down a dark well, and nobody will be able to remember what they were saying.
So…anyone heard anything about Nancy Pelosi lately?
Krista
The entire idea is ridiculous. GM is closing a bunch of dealerships here in Nova Scotia, and I would venture a pretty safe guess that they’re not run by Republican donors.
Michael
I’d seen some other commentary that discusses this from the angle of “Democratic dealerships remain open”.
I’m thinking that looking at factors like geographic region, location, size, positive customer feedback on business practices, that this may make some sense.
Would a Democratic car dealer have more ehtical business practices and generate positive consumer feedback? Maybe, if he were more interested in engaging in his business.
Could be that Republican oriented dealers are more focused on short term profits and don’t emphasize customer service on an institutional basis.
After all – car dealerships really are kind of the last throwbacks to the white male dominated culture of 40 years ago. A GOP oriented dealership could possibly be a more thoroughly distilled ‘purer” version of it, and that would be reflected in their customer satisfaction numbers.
Indylib
@Little Dreamer:
Not necessarily, I have neighbors with 2 yappy little dogs, that are the most annoying creatures I have ever had the misfortune to be around.
When my kids go into the backyard these yappy little hell-spawned demons bark the entire time, and I mean the entire time. If my kids and the dogs are outside at the same time for 5 minutes, the dogs bark for 5 minutes, if my kids are outside for an hour the dogs bark non-stop for an hour. They have a high-pitched penetrating bark that I can hear through the walls of my house.
Due to this metaphor I will now think of these dogs as Rush and Sean.
someguy
Anton Sirius
Oh, come off it. Don’t you find it at least slightly joyful that a Republican congressman is losing a bunch of dealerships? I think that’s awesome. I hope he gets bankrupted and can get a taste of how the rest of us live. And I really don’t care if Republican donors were targeted. Doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me. Like Gypsy says, ‘elections have consequences.’
Little Dreamer
@Indylib:
I stand corrected.
LMAO
Shinobi
Further proof that republicans are anti science.
Little Dreamer
@Michael:
Couldn’t it also be that Dems tend to congregate in larger cities with more clientele and Pubbies tend to like to stay away from those cities and thus have a harder time attracting a large number of customers?
I could be stereotyping here, and I apologize if I am, but I’ve always understood the Pubbies to be people who like sub-urban areas (and I grew up in a suburban Republican household with parents who had lots of suburban Republican friends).
mapaghimagsik
Statistics have a left wing bias.
Bubblegum Tate
@Ted the Slacker:
I would bet money that in a couple months, some wingnut bobblehead (most likely Hannity) will trot it out a la “What about when Obama punished Republican Chrysler dealers by forcing them to shut down?!? Tyranny! Fascism!”
yellowdog
Somewhat OT, but there is a creepy ancient car dealer guy who does his own ads on TV here in the DC area. He’s been using his ads to complain about the closings. Does anyone else think that this may be considered a political ad, with all the necessary identifiers and/or disclaimers.
Bad Horse's Filly
Once again Republicans prove that the truth and facts mean nothing.
Jager
The LA Times, a week or so ago, interviewed a number of California Chrysler store owners. Most were very low volume dealers, in some cases, 20 cars a month or less. These stores were living on parts, service business and used car sales. No self identified Republicans as far as I could tell..just low volume. This is how it works on the local level: The “back end” of a car store can usually pay the fixed cost of operation. (The back end is parts and service) The profit on new is very low, although the dealer gets some money back based on volume and there is money to be made on financing, etc. The car makers make money on new car sales and financing…the dealer really doesn’t. The dealer margin on a Benz is 8%!
The real money is on the used car side, the dealer owns his used cars and when he sells one he gets all the money. You can spot a healthy dealership by the quality and size of the used car inventory.
Savvy dealers buy and sell used cars via the auctions weekly and this goes on at all levels of the business…as my car dealer Dad always said, “The money is in used cars, know your market and know the cars and you’ll never lose a
penny!” There are some real assholes in the car business, almost criminals, but the vast majority are good people, good businessmen and take damn good care of their customers…
As a long time dealer friend of mine told me the other day, the business has been designed to sell 15-16 million units a year, he feels the real number will settle to around 12 million yearly and that means we don’t need as many stores.
One last thing, the American Manufacturers aren’t the only companies with too many stores, Honda and Toyota have more stores than they need, the Germans are just as bad. BMW has three dealerships within 12 miles of my office, two of them are less than 6 miles apart. This a long piece, but I read so much bullshit about the car business, maybe this will clear some of it up.
Zandar
Math, Wingers.
You’re doing it wrong.
srv
One of those conservative blogs had a letter last week from a FL Chrysler dealer screaming about how his franchise was being taken away, the death of the american dream, and the free market. And apple pie.
Wingnuts were suitably outraged. Someone then linked to it from a libertarian site, and they all went over to point out just how “free market” a corporate and state-sanctioned franchise was.
Screaming ensued.
Jager
I’d like to see that FL dealers sales figures…bet they are way below the average of other dealers in the same size markets. No way in hell would they burn a strong store!
srv
Ah, found it. Comments are a rage.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/05/letter_from_a_dodge_dealer.html
HyperIon
@NewMexiKen:
but only if they do it repeatedly.
someone should go back and count the number of time JC has verbally shaken his head as he expresses his puzzlement, shock, amazement, incredulity at his former party.
RememberNovember
It’s like the business owner who sets fire to his shop to collect the insurance money who yells at the Fire Dept for not putting out the fire fast enough.