Romney: I'll take a lot of credit for auto industry success.

[pbrower2a]

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/07/romney-ill-take-a-lot-of-credit-for-auto-industry-success/

Honestly, do Republicans hate Obama so much that they will actually support this man?

No -- they are so deluded that they think that a trimming, self-contradicting leader is better suited to lead America than someone so... whatever.

[pbrower2a]

But North Carolina Yankee, the State can make any 'business model' 'succeed' or 'fail' by the legal structure in which it is allowed to function.  The only reason an 'auto company' branch of government has difficulties or thrives is due to its legally defined powers - relating to taxes, trade, control of workers, etc.  The autos were 'failing' because of policy, and its just an alteration of policy to make them 'succeed'.

My statement assumes a degree of political reality. The Midwest is shrinking and at some point California, Texas and Florida would grow weary of propping up a perpetually insolvent institution either as a nationalized entity or a constantly bailed out private firm. Plus, no mainstream political figures were willing to tolerate nationalization.

The Midwest and the Northeast have been shrinking largely because people don't like winter. Nobody really likes shoveling snow, and having to pay for heating fuel and multiple sets of clothes does not come with any hedonistic delight attached. If one ignores real estate costs, living in the snow belt implies a higher cost of living due to cold-weather expenses, and thus higher pay that requires union wages.

You are right about nationalization. Americans still distrust government involvement in business whether as owners or regulators. What is public sector they accept if it is effective and economical. But that is a vastly different story and a severe digression. 

[pbrower2a]

I will say it again, though. The credit is not being sought for it's own sake, it is being sought primarily as a method for combating the idea that he wanted them to be liquidated.

He was willing to let them be liquidated as a message to those who have solid wages -- accept poverty and harsher conditions of employment on behalf of executives, financiers, tycoons, and big landowners who are the only people of significance in America. The GOP solution is economic, if not political fascism... government exists only to rescue elites, and such rescues invariably imply the marginalization of working people. It is a return of capitalism to the Marxist stereotype of early capitalism, an ugly but all-too-real caricature of the Gilded Age.