Now Rush Limbaugh Reportedly Wants GM To Fail Too
Talking Points Memo reports that there’s now a move on the part of some conservatives to boycott General Motors (that’ll teach Barack Obama a lesson):
The Detroit Bureau reports that an idea seems to be picking up some cachet on the right-wing blogs and in talk radio: Fighting the “Government Motors” bailout by boycotting the company. Most of it so far is limited to relatively little-known writers, but two big names have picked up on it: Hugh Hewitt, who wants to save free enterprise — and Rush Limbaugh, who wants anything President Obama does to fail, and is urging his listeners to help push towards that goal.
“In the effort to reverse this lurch beyond the farthest left fringe of previous Democratic statist urges, individual Americans have a role to play. They have to say no to GM products and services until such time as the denationalization occurs,” says Hugh Hewitt. He acknowledges that this is a serious step that could hurt people currently working for GM: “But there isn’t any alternative, every dollar spent with GM is a dollar spent against free enterprise. Every car or truck purchased from Government Motors is one not purchased from a private car company that competes fairly against all other car companies.”
Where Hewitt makes his point as a seemingly reluctant and composed agitator, Rush Limbaugh makes no bones about what he wants in his own praise of the idea. The most amazing thing here is that Limbaugh appears to be openly admitting that the purpose of this is economic and political sabotage — to prevent President Obama from succeeding at something.
I drive a GM Chevrolet mini-van. Limbaugh just clinched it: I will make SURE I replace this with a GM van when the time comes to trade it in. I just have a problem with someone flying around in a private jet working to sabotage something that could impact an economy vital to all Americans — even Republicans who don’t fly around the country in their own private jets.
If you hear a rumbling, it’s probably the noise of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan rolling over in their graves because this is not the kind of attitude traditional conservatives had towards the well-being of the country as a whole. But perhaps TPM and the Detroit News are wrong on this. It is mind-boggling..
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38 Responses to “Now Rush Limbaugh Reportedly Wants GM To Fail Too”
Question for Hewitt. With regard to boycotting until denationalization occurs,how will denationalization occur if the boycott is successful? This will more likely result in GM going out of business entirely than the denationalization he seeks. Sounds disengenuous, or least not well thought out, to me.
Why waste bandwidth on what the Supreme Court of the US is doing on the Chrysler deal when you can cover something Rush Limbaugh said!
I just have a problem with someone flying around in a private jet working to sabotage something that could impact an economy vital to all Americans
You mean Obama?
I heard Limbaugh do this last Friday.
A few minutes later, he narrated a commercial for GM!
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Why are we surprised that Limbaugh wants GM to fail?
Isn't GM part of our critically important automobile industry?
Isn't our automobile industry a critical part of our national economy?
And didn't Mr.Limbaugh again and again say that he wanted our economy to fail to smitherins?
Perhaps this is irrelevant, but when Ford managed to come through the winter/spring under its own financial power, I decided I needed to look into their vehicles. For better or worse, I wanted to (potentially) 'reward' their better stewardship and business practices.
Haven't purchased anything yet, but this is the first time I've ever considered buying a Ford.
My thinking, though, has nothing to do with (and radically pre-dates) Limbaugh and agitators and talks of boycotts. However, I do think there's a certain element of society (surely I'm not alone?) that resents GM / Chrysler for having screwed up SO badly that they're costing us all billions.
However, I do think there's a certain element of society (surely I'm not alone?) that resents GM / Chrysler for having screwed up SO badly that they're costing us all billions.
No you're not alone, and it will be interesting to see how buying patterns will be affected. Ford seems to be the most stable of the big three and that has to count for something when people are deciding what car to buy.
Your question though is how many will actually have a negative image of GM as opposed to a positive image of Ford. It may well fall along partisan lines although I think anyone with a modicum of libertarian or free market philosophy has to have at least a little disdain for GM.
“How many will actually have a negative image of GM as opposed to a positive image of Ford. “
I suppose, in the end, the motives may not matter much. The end result of those opposing images is likely to be very similar: still fewer GM sales.
Limbaugh likes saying controversial stuff so he can keep his ratings high and lucrative multi-hundred million dollar entertainment contract.
Why do so many people resist the need to help their country in the time of crises, especially if their president asks them to help?
Whatever happened to the phrase, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”?
Limbaugh and his followers are just plain nuts. They attack people for wanting to help the country, but at the same time they hope the country fails.
Simple solution to get Rush to fail: Just report on some unforgivable foible in his past, whip up the scandal [just like he does, a dose of his own medicine] and then simply stop reporting on him. He'll blow away like a feather in the wind..
Speaking of blow…lol…; )
The other day Chris Matthews was interviewing the head of GM. Why I found ironic was how Chris Matthews could not hide his contempt for GM products. I doubt if any of the pro-Obama reporters in the MSM currently drive an American made vehicle or will ever purchase an American made vehicle. Once again, why should middle class Americans have to be tax to support a car company that the elite of the U.S. will never purchase.
For those who like to truth and facts, I suggest you follow the links back to the source and read the transcript of what was actually said.
As with most liberal interpretations of Limbaugh, the TPM (and subsequently Joe Gandelman’s) article made it seem as though Rush had started a movement to boycott GM. When one takes the time to find out what really happened, they find that Rush was reporting on a Rasmussen Poll that stated 24% of consumers wouldn’t purchase a GM vehicle due to the government’s involvement with the company.
Limbaugh made the point that people were not opposed to GM workers, but the government interference in the free market system.
Did Rush agree with the proposition of boycotting GM? He didn’t say, but perhaps the case could be made that he didn’t argue against it.
The main point is the perception advanced by the TPM and TMV articles was dishonest and typical of those writers on the left who foist inaccurate information on unsuspecting readers to advance their vitriolic vision of those on the right.
Many car companies around the world get some sort of assistance from their national governments. VW of Germany is an excellent example.
El Rushbo's own car, a Mercedes Maybach, was made by a company that is owned in large part by the government of Kuwait and Abu Dhabi.
jwest, I went back and read the Limbaugh transcripts and have to agree with you – TPM (and Joe Gandelman) are really misrepresenting what was said.
Rush, and all right thinking americans know that only when managed by German or Japanese (Korean too!) managers do useless, lazy, bloated american workers build a half way decent car. We Republicans understand that we need to allow Toyota, Nissan, Kia, and Hyundai the freedom to sell cars in america, while restricting imports into their markets. This is because americans are bad workers who build crappy cars.
Mr. Rush Limbaiugh, great American patriot, February 13, 2009:
“I’ll say it again. Not only do I want Obama to fail, I want this package to fail. I want this to blow up in their face.
I hope the stimulus bill fails. I hope it does exactly what we know it will do, blow everything to smithereens and not do one thing that has been promised. Apparently, experience is the greatest teacher, and when these poor people who think Barack Obama means a new house, a new car, a new job, when they find out that’s not what Barack Obama means, maybe then they’ll see. So I hope that happens.
I hope Obama fails. Now the bill has passed the House. I hope when they implement it, that it fails. If I hope it fails beforehand, I better hope it fails afterwards to be consistent, right?”
jwest – lets be honest here… Rush has identified repeatedly the cause of the american auto industry failure. Lazy, shiftless unionized autoworkers. I think they even pop pills while on the assembly line which is one of the reasons the cars they build are so crappy. Our valiant auto executives are persecuted by the drive by media. Obama crucifies our auto execs instead of the lazy, slobs building these pieces of junk. Shame on the UAW. As Rush pointed out, when lead by Asian or German masters, then these poor slobs can put together a decent automobile. Join Rush and boycott GM NOW !!!
BushCheney,
Rush hasn’t said any of those things about union workers, but I certainly have.
GM and Chrysler would be viable, profitable companies if it wasn’t’ for the crooks, thugs and inbred cretins that make up the bulk of the UAW. Wages weren’t the problem; it was the larcenous work rules that really finished these companies.
Let the union fools freeze under a bridge, clinging to their union cards this winter. When you spend the majority of your life trying to screw the company, don’t expect a lot of people to sympathize with you when you finally run it into the ground.
jwest – Thanks – I knew you see it the right – Republican way. If they are starving – let them eat cake! STupid lazy blue collar workers – they are so dirty too.
“Larcenous work rules”??? Why don't we define that.
Larcenous: of, resembling, or characteristic of larceny.
Larceny: The unlawful taking and removing of another's personal property with the intent of permanently depriving the owner; theft.
(both from Dictionary.com)
Which rules exactly were thieving from GM and Chrysler? Even to Ford as they have UAW workers too.
Are you saying there was never any larcenous, let's throw in greedy/profiteering too, people in the executive offices or board rooms of GM, Chrysler, or Ford. No? Just honest hard working people that just wait their fare share and a comfortable living wage.
You probably don't think any larcenous or profiteering people worked, or still working, in the executive offices and board rooms of AIG, Merrel Lynch, or Lehman brothers either.
Let's look a management of “the big three”. Your statement seems to claim that it was the line workers (AKA larcenous UAW workers) who decide which products to build year to year, where to spend R&D money. It was all the line workers who failed to see the writing on the wall and continued to build larger and larger SUVs, Hummers, and Trucks with just token “economy” cars to meet CAFE standards while their foreign completion flew past.
Now let's talk about Ford. Ford sold off divisions, Land Rover and Jaguar to name two, for money they stored it in the bank. Smart move on their part, but that doesn't mean they are immune to getting into the same position as GM or Chrysler. They are clearing debt that Ford is still holding and could end up being in a worse position than GM or Chrysler in a few years.
Rambie,
Although my point was about the UAW union work rules that allow high seniority workers to make six figure annual salaries while doing next to nothing in return, along with entire groups of unnecessary people being paid each day for sitting around, I will respond about the management.
GM designed and built the exact type of cars and trucks people wanted to buy. This is evidenced by their being the number one selling vehicles in the world, until just recently when Toyota outsold them by a small margin.
You have the ridiculous notion that is GM built small, efficient “green” cars, their problems would be over. The trouble is, they do build those cars. All over the world, people drive the exact cars you think would save GM. Our government doesn’t allow GM to bring these to the U.S. from their other plants and it’s unprofitable to manufacture them here, but they’ve got the cars.
As a matter of fact, GM’s foreign divisions are profitable. It’s only the North American operations that are the losers. And the reason they are losers is because of the crooks, thugs and inbred cretins that populate the UAW.
I hope this explanation helps.
Nothing said by either Joe Gandleman here at TMV or Joshua Marshall at TPM misrepresents what Limbaugh said.
I don't see why Jwest and DaGoat are claiming otherwise.
Neither Gandleman nor Marshall are claiming that Limbaugh is leading an effort to boycott GM.
Just as Limbaugh is relaying some information from the Rassmussen organization, Gandleman and Marshall are relaying some information from an organization called The Detroit Bureau that there is a movement afoot among right-wing talk radio and blogs to boycott GM.
Right?
And I'd love to see the source–please provide links–for the assertions that “the UAW union work rules that allow high seniority workers to make six figure annual salaries while doing next to nothing in return, along with entire groups of unnecessary people being paid each day for sitting around”.
George,
No need be disingenuous here. The headline is what DaGoat and I are talking about. TPM and Joe both saw this lie as a way to poke the conservatives, knowing that with the prejudices so prevalent on the left, no one would check the actual facts.
It is inconceivable that you would sacrifice your intellectual honesty by trying to parse the articles to mean anything else.
Let the guilty hand their heads in shame. They can try to do better the next time (as they now know someone is watching).
Jwest–
I understand that name-calling is what you do.
Even the headline of this very post is qualified. Let me help you out with a little emphasis here:
Seriously: What is the lie you're claiming? Can you spell it out?
Can you?
And, Jwest, I'm also waiting on your sources–please provide links–for the assertions that “the UAW union work rules that allow high seniority workers to make six figure annual salaries while doing next to nothing in return, along with entire groups of unnecessary people being paid each day for sitting around”.
Someone is indeed watching.
GeorgeS if you read the comment from TPM the clear implication is that Limbaugh is encouraging people not to buy GM. That definitely applies to Hugh Hewitt, but as I read the transcript Limbaugh is just commenting on the concept and what's behind it. Now you could parse out TPM and Gandelman's comments trying to say that's not what they meant, but you're really stretching the point.
Limbaugh says plenty of idiotic things, there is no need for the left to make things up.
DaGoat–
Maybe you're saying that Gandleman and Marshall are implying something unsaid by the way they say it.
It seems to me that Limbaugh might also be implying something unsaid by the way he says it.
But none of them are coming out and saying it.
Right?
George how do you read this:
Rush Limbaugh makes no bones about what he wants in his own praise of the idea.
As far as what Limbaugh said all I can go by is the transcript. It's certainly possible he used inflections, etc that made it sound like he was supporting the idea but that's not the way I read it.
DaGoat–
I guess I could answer by continuing with Marshall's next sentence, also with a little added emphasis:
So it does seem to me that, if you read the whole thing, Marshall qualifies his comment.
But earlier you talked about “parsing”. It's obvious, I think what Gandleman and Marshall are saying. But it's also equally obvious what Limbaugh is saying.
Quoting Limbaugh, from the transcript on his own site:
That's not reportage of a Rassmussen poll, it's analysis–it's Limbaugh's own opinion. What he means is obvious. You don't have to hear the inflections of his voice.
I don't see how anyone can fairly claim misrepresentation.
What all three of them mean is obvious.
You can't have it both ways.
Although on the matter of his own voice, I mentioned in a comment last Friday that I actually heard this exchange on the radio. (The link to that comment is HERE.)
What the transcript doesn't reveal is that Limbaugh went to a commercial break after this bit of his broadcast.
The commercial, which Limbaugh narrated himself, was for–GM!!!
Rush is getting his very own piece of the stimulus money!!!!!!
GeorgeS thanks for a civil discussion. We'll have to agree to disagree here.
Thanks to you as well, DaGoat.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have built and sold SUVs and trucks, you do have to sell what the market wants. However, they did do their own part to generate said demand.
What I was saying is that if GM and the other Big Three, had put as much effort they did in fighting mileage & emission standards into R&D instead, they'd be in a much better place today with more patents on the technology instead of having to purchase them form Toyota & Honda now.
GM was experimenting with Hybrid tech in the late 1960's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_XP-883 and here is a link with pictures of it: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/1969-gm….
Who today has the most patents on Hybrid tech? Honda, Ford, Toyota, then GM in 4th. http://www.environmentalleader.com/2009/03/27/h…
Because of CAFE standards Ford, GM, and Chrysler had to have small cars in their fleet, but they never really put much effort into R&D to make them better than the offerings from Honda, Toyota and other foreign manufacturers. The big three surrendered the small car market which left mainly Toyota and Honda to innovate and dominate the market.
Rush Limbaugh is an angry chubby little man…that abuses oxycotton, viagra and flies to third world countries to have ilicit sex with minors…
Get him laid and keep him juiced up…and he will mellow out!!!
Lefties, please grow up, even though that's rare behavior here as much as anywhere else.
GM and the federal takeover of it are disgraceful. And as someone else rightly said on this site some time ago, “We're screwed,” only it's going to get worse later. It's bad enough that we have had the federal government take GM over. It was lurid and sickening to see Obama not only make a speech about it, but to be accompanied by his Cabinet behind him (The Messiah and his Chief Disciples; the Pope and His Cardinals), as if the childish people they exploit the most, even they needed reassurance about this. We've seen creditors given Hugo Chavez treatment while the huge, bloated, still-overcompensated dinosaur-dung UAW gets what it doesn't deserve, a stake in the company (and effectively constituting additional Democratic Washington control of the company). And doesn't the federal government have the power to appoint or approve board members? Mussolini already would be proud of that. (How long before operations and products become politicized, if they haven't already, that is?) We've been treated to a token “symbolic” (to appeal to the exploitable people, again) firing of Wagoner. We've seen Washington not only with Chrysler but with GM exercise control over the company even though they lie and say they won't and don't want to. We've been treated to stupid blather about the future, “green” nonsense, and magic electric salvation where there is no such thing now on hand. We've been treated to “wave-a-wand” higher fuel efficiency standards announced by a large group behaving as a disgusting environmentalist beat-off brigade. We now have “AmCars,” which we already know will never be in truly fair competition, a government love-child monster, with the rest of industry. (How long before Obama orders the feds and directs stimulus money in the states to replace government vehicles with AmCars?) We've already seen idiot Barney Frank demand a sparing of a facility to be closed in his district, with GM's subsequent compliance, and we're about to see other members of Congress do the same as well as try to pass legislation that prevents the vast excess in the bloated GM dealer network (which would still be bloated and inferior to Toyota's, for example, if the current plan were implemented) from being eliminated. (The monster and its problems are set to grow — what a surprise!) It's horrible and only going to get worse, and isn't respectable.
Even here in Detroit, many in the press, who don't necessarily object to a bailout given the desperate state of affairs this place and the failed-model companies are in, there is a considerable amount of concern about the federal takeover, the stupid fuel regs, and the survival of GM even as a propped-up government monstrosity. As the press even here says, there is no evidence people will rush to buy smaller vehicles (the assumptions of higher fuel prices in the future, which are inconsistent but all much higher than current prices, have nothing but wishes to back them up), much less be willing to pay significantly more for wonder green-weenie promised technology (yet to be fielded) that purports to save them on operating costs. (Never mind the electric-car people's stupid blathering about vague nirvana — where will we get the new electrical capacity to recharge all those vehicles, and quickly, and when will we develop the necessary hardware that must be useable in all kinds of weather and hazardous conditions, for example?) What some of us anticipate already from the arrogant, conceited elitist troublemakers that will come next, if the public refuses to behave in politically or “socially” correct, i.e., desired, ways, is malevolent taxes — high taxes on the un-PC larger, conventional, cheaper vehicles to subsidize the purchase of the PC smaller, enviro-tech-giggly vehicles. Things are already horrible with GM and will only get worse — it's completely predictable.
Even people in Detroit resent federal encroachment where the feds don't belong, and they like everyone else fear the destruction of GM. Most of us in this country never thought much of GM in its former state and have even less respect for this disgusting federal-UAW enviro-play-pen-experimental-lab monstrosity that is is now, with a host of additional things to go wrong later. At our (taxpayer) expense, wholly wrongfully, for “good” measure, too.
Why would anyone moral or patriotic respect such a despicable undertaking, or GM itself, which is now the product (ongoing) of such a despicable undertaking? The answer is, they shouldn't, and they don't.
Contempt for and even a boycott of Gummint Motors, stupid AmCars, is the patriotic as well as the moral position to hold. It's perfectly normal that this idiocy by the feds (and payoff of the dinosaur UAW) be fuel for conservative commentators. People here in Detroit are on record as saying they'll never buy GM again because of this takeover. The real question is why anyone would question (much less criticize) any ill will toward AmCars.
“what the Supreme Court of the US is ruling on the Chrysler deal “
That's something _important_. Why address that when you can gossip or attack Limbaugh or John Voight, say?