GOP strategist: Success of auto bailout 'a kick in the balls' for Romney

[trailmonkee]

from kos: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/26/1136645/-GOP-strategist-Success-of-auto-bailout-a-kick-in-the-balls-for-Romney

Here's one of the reasons that President Obama is leading Mitt Romney by 10 points in the latest Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS survey of Ohio: More than twice as many Ohioans think the auto rescue plan was a success than think it was a failure.

Do you think the government loans to the American auto industry were mostly a success or mostly a failure?
Mostly a success: 62
Mostly a failure: 30

And while Obama gets credit for saving the auto industry, Mitt Romney's plan was to simply let Detroit go bankrupt. Given that one in eight Ohio jobs are linked to the auto industry, it's not hard to see why the issue plays well for President Obama, a fact lamented by a GOP strategist with this colorful language:

Putting a finer point on the matter, one longtime Ohio GOP strategist called Obama's advantage on the auto bailout "a kick in the balls" for the Romney campaign.

[unblock]

1. funny, it turns out people actually WANT the government to solve problems.

i know that's a hard concept for republicans to grasp, but whaddya know, people actually like it when government WORKS.

[Blue_Tires]

2. Made it a POINT to buy American with my next car a couple years back...

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

3. Saw a clip of Romney yesterday in Ohio

Mocking the auto bail-out. "How did that work out for you?" I believe was the rhetorical question he posed to the audience.


Uh...Great? Fabulous? Kept me from losing my house?


Other than Michigan, I don 't think ANY state benefitted from the auto bail-out more than Ohio.

[porphyrian]

4. . n/t

[Cali_Democrat]

5. Remember when the GOP thought the auto bailout was a disaster at the time?

They mocked GM and called it Government Motors. They said the bailout would turn out to be a failure that would hurt Obama.

Now look at what's happening

[BlueStreak]

6. They still do and they are still mocking it.

I still get emails every week talking about "Government motors" and talking about how terrible the Volt is.

Most of the people who send me this crap are reasonably intelligent people. It is really baffling that they would send emails predicting that GM is about ready to fail miserably when the GM stock price has gone up 20% in the past 3 months and is near its 52-week high. Say what you will about Wall Street, but they rarely bid up the value on a stock that is about ready to go under.

And regarding the Volt, they seem to ignore the fact that this is a revolutionary technology (serial hybrid). Toyota went 10 years underwriting losses on the Prius but now that technology is the future of Toyota. The Volt system is the future of GM. It already has them at the leading edge as a plug-in hybrid, and that technology package is very well positioned to quickly adopt other more efficient power sources, such as fuel cells or clean-burning Diesels.

At the heart of all of this is a central theme, I believe. Time moves forward whether we like it or not. The world is moving forward, whether it be vehicles or personal relationships. People normally resist change, but I think most Americans are coming to grips with the fact that change is happening and if we cling to the 1950s, we and our way of life will be overtaken. What we need is leaders who have the wisdom to guide a safe path forward, not people who are blind to the change altogether.