Shocker: Politicians Playing Politics with Their New Car Companies

The latest conspiracy theory making its way around the Internet is that the Obama administration is punishing Republican leaning car dealerships. Specifically, those identified to be closed as the result of the reorganizations of Chrysler and GM tend to be aligned with the Republican party.

Clusterstock has done a good job of covering the story without falling into either partisan camp. You can visit their post today for background and also the pretty sober assessment that there may be something going on but there’s no way to prove it.

I think that you can pretty well count on the fact that there is something to this story and I would suggest that anyone that’s surprised by that probably needs some serious therapy. Politicians reward their friends and punish their enemies — that’s the game, it’s hardball. Get used to dealing with it.

This isn’t even batting practice. When the game gets going for real look out. You don’t buy votes with a single payment. In politics it’s always what have you done for me lately and we’re all about to see how that operates when the politicians control a large slice of a major sector of the economy.

The loneliest man in Detroit right now has to be Alan Mulally, Ford’s CEO. He’s been around the block with the government many times and knows what’s coming down the road. The chances he runs a private company competing head-to-head with government owned enterprises successfully have to be close to nil. I don’t know what his end game might be but I hope it’s one that wrings some value out of the franchise for the shareholders when the politicians come calling.

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