Red Light, Red State

The GOP attack on Detroit is being led by southern Senators from non-union, non-American automaker states: Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, etc. These states are deep red and the people there have been told time and time again that unions are destroying America.

On the other side of the line are blue states with UAW workers: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and states with tons of auto dealerships like California and New York. Make no mistake that for the GOP, this is all about red vs. blue politics. They have an opportunity to punish blue states and the people who live and work there, the gain a measure of revenge against those crazy Yankees for rejecting the party of God and America.

If GM goes under and people buy more Toyotas made in Kentucky or Hondas made in Tennessee, that's good for the southern states. People will leave cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh and move to Atlanta, Nashville and Birmingham, giving southern states more people and more power.

This isn't just about wrecking the UAW, although that's a big part of it. This is about wrecking the economies of blue states. Even though Asian automakers have said on a number of occasions that their sales are down sharply too and that a Big Three bankruptcy will hurt them as well, that doesn't matter to the GOP. They have a chance to hurt blue states. Period.

Because that's how the GOP operates. Democrats are the enemy, plain and simple. And the enemy must be crushed.

[UPDATE] Glad I'm not the only one who sees this (h/t LGM)

As today's news again reminds us, the GOP doesn't seem terribly concerned about much more problematic things like the disgusting, virtually no-strings-attached re-re bailouts of Citigroup and AIG. Rather, Republican senators want to drive down wages for American autoworkers and create competitive advantages for their right-to-work states so much that they're willing to inflict massive blows to the American economy to do so. (As Molly Ivors cracks, if there was some way of putting together a bailout that would pay executives and not workers, the bailout might have had a chance.)

And that's the bottom line. Screw the blue states, victory for red ones.

The lesson the GOP learned from the 2008 election is that they weren't assholes enough.