Analysis: Shuttered Chrysler Dealers Heavily Anti-Obama In Election | Bucks Right — This thesis could be bogus, but if it holds up there will be hell to pay for the Democrats. I was personally baffled by some of the closures of successful dealerships in Washington State. Many needed rural dealers (generally Republican) were shuttered while multiple urban Seattle (Democrat) dealers were left alone. In other words the dealers were not being spread out. It made no sense to me.
An analysis of the list of Chrysler dealers closed down by the Obama-run auto maker show that many were donors to Republican candidates and Democrat rivals of Barack Obama during the 2008 election cycle.
Many observers were confused by the list of 789 Chrysler dealerships that were ordered to close their doors before June 9, as the closings seemed to follow no pattern based on sales volume or profitability. Two preliminary studies found on the Internet seem to have located a common thread: Donations to politicians and political causes at odds with Barack Obama.
A document outlining campaign contributions by various shuttered dealers is posted here.
The question remains. What was the exact criteria for shuttering one dealer over another? We have not been told.
Found by Chris Hollman.
I’m still confused about the part where somehow closing a dealer will save Chrysler money.
Dealers sell cars. When they sell cars, Chrysler makes money. If they can’t sell cars, then the dealer goes out of business anyway.
My other point is that not all these dealers will be “shuttered”. They won’t be selling Chrysler any more. But they can still remain in the car business – to compete directly with Chrysler. So all Chrysler has done is create a bunch of motivated, pissed-off competitors.
I expect to see this on Snopes in the next day or two.
Yeah, I hate that obama guy he only democrats as his staff!
Rual Dealer don’t sell much and not have selection that you can drive off same day.
Big City Dealer have all the selections so they sell more cars, they stay.
#59, trouble,
So what? So far there are over 60 hits. There’d be even more if Alphie would visit a little more.
Yep. Get ready for more bullshit from the Fascists.
Ya know, once upon a time laws were made to ensure that a sad occurrence such as this would be as fair as possible to everyone involved.
But with the new king, all that seems to have disapeared. Contracts are no longer honored and the ‘rule of law’ does not exist. The new law of the land appears to be – Riches for those who please the king, scrapes and leftovers for everyone else.
If this event were so “translucent” and on the up and up, then why are some – but not all – of the bankruptcy laws being followed? (this is not a hypothesis but general knowledge, so like the defination of “is”, it does not need to be cross-referenced or linked)
Now just for fun:
Since it appears that select dealerships are being removed following an unknown criteria that is not being revealed (gotta love secrets), one has to then ask, “Who benefits”.
Just a thought; But if I were a competing [pick your own] dealership and I was just told that not only was my competition being completely removed, but that I can also can grab his best salesmen…in addition to the land to expand my operation, I think I might be pretty happy with this new king.
Umm, didn’t all the Republicans vote against the auto bailout? Wouldn’t that mean they wanted 100% of the Republican voting dealers closed?
#68 stop,
Are you including the RINOs in that vote?
Obviously the bailout didn’t make any difference except to allow the W.H. to muddy the waters.
What I do not hear being asked is who really benefits from closing dealerships? Certainly not the consumer.
It just seems odd that they are arbitrarily closing profitable businesses simply to reduce competition. I guess it simply confirms my decision to buy another Hyundai a couple of months ago. I actually considered a Ford Escape, but the Ford dealer was not willing to deal. The Hyundai dealer was.
Don
What is the logic behind shutting down any dealers? If they aren’t selling they’ll go out of business by themself.
Has any car company ever disclosed its method for choosing which dealerships to close?
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/28/right-wing-theory-car-dealerships-to-close/
Silver explained, “It turns out that all car dealers are, in fact, overwhelmingly more likely to donate to Republicans than to Democrats — not just those who are having their doors closed.” In all, Silver found that “88 percent of the contributions from car dealers went to Republican candidates and just 12 percent to Democratic candidates,” while, the list of Chrysler dealerships being closed “gave 92 percent of their money to Republicans — not really a significant difference.”
# 71 MikeN said, “What is the logic behind shutting down any dealers? If they aren’t selling they’ll go out of business by themself.”
I was thinking about this. Franchise agreements usually have co-marketing spending/reimbursement agreements…
It seems more logical to conclude that Republican leaning dealerships were a peace of shit and failures.
No one has yet offered any explanation of why this is “the government” doing this. It isn’t, it is Chrysler and Chrysler alone making these decisions. The government, and certainly Obama, has nothing to do with what is happening in any bankruptcy court.
This was touched on earlier, but the fact is dealers PAY franchise fees to Chrysler, so it makes no sense for Chrysler to forcibly close down a single dealership. Not only have there been closures, but franchisee licenses have been taken from one dealership and handed, without compensation, to other dealers down the road, with no explanation.
So the questions are:
1) Why is the government forcing Chrysler to close any dealerships?
2) How are they choosing which ones to close, since they appear to be closing healthy ones while keeping less healthy ones alive? Is it political patronage?
#61 “I’m still confused about the part where somehow closing a dealer will save Chrysler money.”
The issue is that there is not enough business to keep all the dealerships open. Closing dealerships will give the remaining dealerships a larger part of the shrinking pie. Econ 101.
#77, BB
The question is can you show that the government is actually the one choosing which dealerships are closing?
In the attached article, which you obviously didn’t read, it points out that the closed dealers got to question the Chrysler execs in a discovery motion. It didn’t say anything about the government even having a hand in it.
Just more bullshit from the right wing nuts trying to blame Obama for what they asked for.
Note for those of you new to Dvorak:
When Dvorak posts some conspiracy theory, he doesn’t believe a word of it. It’s just part of his strategy, which he’s articulated many times, to get as many eyeballs as possible on his page.
Don’t you ever notice that he pretends to be alarmed by conspiracy theories — from both the right and the left — that completely contradict each other?
Dvorak’s real politics are a vague sort of compassionate libertarianism. It’s “Don’t touch my stuff,” for the most part, but with a dash of unsystematic social conscience.