Many conservative bloggers, such as
Michelle Malkin, have noted that the owners of hundreds of Chrysler dealerships recently shut down donated heavily to John McCain, the suggestion being that Obama targeted Republican dealers purposely.
But Factcheck.org
analyzed the situation and found:
CRP then searched within the 2008 donation data specifically for itemized contributions in which the word “Chrysler” appears where donors identify their employer or occupation. They also searched for references to Chrysler brands “Jeep,” “Dodge,” “Mopar” and “General Electric Motorcars,” and Chrysler corporate parents “Daimler” and “Cerberus.” Altogether, this group gave $26,200 to McCain and $2,700 to Obama.
That leads us to think that if Chrysler dealers were chosen for closing purely at random, with no political thumb on the scales at all, we should see nearly $10 in McCain donations for every $1 of Obama donations, both from the dealers who were closed and the dealers who were not.
Furthermore, Factcheck.org noted:
For the record, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said at a White House briefing May 28 that the administration isn’t even involved in picking which dealerships stay open and which are to close:
Gibbs, May 28: The President’s task force on autos did not pick individual dealerships. It hasn’t — it isn’t involved in picking what plants may or may not be closed. That’s not the job of the President’s auto task force. That’s the job of the individual car company. They’ve got to figure out in their newly restructured world, based on the market, what their central supply chain is. And I think those are the decisions that they made.
When a Fox News correspondent asked about “concern in the blogosphere” about political influence, Gibbs said, “let me reiterate that we don’t make those decisions, okay. Chrysler makes those decisions.”
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