In Obama's Economy: The Employees and Owners of Ford Motor Company...

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

As I said in another thread, I fail to see why some Republicans consider badmouthing the recovery to be good politics.  If the recovery falters, they'll most likely benefit from that in any event, but if the economy continues to revive at its current slow pace, or worse actually starts to surge, they are setting themselves up to be in danger of losing the House.  They've got plenty of good cards to play besides bashing Obama about the slow pace of the economy.  Focusing on this card so much has little upside benefit for the Republicans and a whole lot of downside peril.

OTOH, it is sad when of the previous posters in a thread I'm replying to that Politico has made the least insensible comments.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

It's actually quite simple: Ford was successful because they mostly delivered products the market demanded in a cost-efficient manner. GM and Chrysler mostly delivered products the market did not demand, and they obviously did so without being cost-efficient. To put it even more simply, Ford the winner was forced to help bailout the losers.

I can understand the GM bailout, and do not necessarily disagree with it, but the Chrysler bailout was wholly inexcusable. Their assets should have been liquidated to the highest bidders. They had already been bailed out once before. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

A good part of why Ford was able to avoid a bailout was they went to a high leverage position before the credit crunch, which gave them the cash to ride out the downturn.  They planned for the possibility, while GM did not and was unable to secure the financing they needed once the crunch hit. Considering that Ford shareholders have made out much better than old GM shareholders have, to say the bailout helped GM disproportionately would require not using a shareholder-centric view of what a company is.

As for Chrysler, the fact is that if Chrysler had gone into conventional bankruptcy, its factories would all be closed now, and those jobs and those of their suppliers and dealers would be gone for good.  There has been and continues to be an oversupply of production capacity in the auto industry.  Keeping Chrysler running until it could be taken over by another company was the best way to keep those jobs in America.  It likely would have been better if it hadn't be Fiat that took Chrysler, but no better option presented itself.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

As I said in another thread, I fail to see why some Republicans consider badmouthing the recovery to be good politics.

One, this is not a recovery by American standards. Being pleased with mediocrity, if not outright stagnation, is best left to Europe, not America. Two, once the sh**t really hits the fan in the EU, who knows what will happen? We know it is going to be bad no matter what. The question is how bad.

Think about it this way: Remember how bad the economy was in January 2008, and how worse it became by March 2008 (Bear Stearns) and then even worse by September 2008 (Lehman Brothers)? We've yet to reach a Bear Sterns moment, let alone a Lehman Brothers moment, but both are around the corner. Now you know why Mitt Romney is going to be the 45th President of the United States of America.

If it gets that bad, then yes, the Republican nominee (who is not yet guaranteed to be Romney) will win the White House.  But if it doesn't get that bad then not only will Obama get a second term, but the Romney campaign strategy will hand the Democrats the House.

You praised Ford for avoiding a bailout while GM and Chrysler did not, but failed to realize why that was the case.  Ford planned for the possibility that not everything would go as they would have liked.  If the economy had continued to go well, GM would have been lauded as the automaker who planned best as they would have had the capacity to meet consumer demand that Ford would not have.  Romney and his surrogates are acting like GM, assuming that events will unfold in the manner that is most advantageous to them.  The Republicans need to act more like Ford than GM.  Basing their electoral strategy on one particular chain of economic events is bad strategy.  Despite your hopes for economic gloom and doom, the economy could do well, and if that happens, the Republicans are setting themselves up for catastrophic failure.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

One wonders why the Romneybots are trying to drive Reagan Democrats to vote for Santorum.  Santorum was already surging in Michigan before yesterday.  They might want to wait until after the Michigan primary to resume bashing the auto industry.