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..
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.