The Janesville President – WSJ.com
August 31 | Posted by mrossol | Liberal Press, Obama, The Left“Not my fault…” Obama
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From their fainting couches, the press corps “fact checkers” and the liberals who love them are having a spell over Paul Ryan’s Tampa convention speech. How dare he so much as mention the Wisconsin assembly plant that President Obama promised to keep open but didn’t?
The claim is that there was nothing the White House could do, because the General Motors facility in Mr. Ryan’s hometown of Janesville was already starting to idle production and slated for closure when Mr. Obama took office. Therefore the empty production lines are George W. Bush’s fault, like everything else in the last four years.
But so what? Mr. Ryan made the factual statement that “we were about to lose a major factory” (our emphasis). Basic comprehension of human language didn’t deter Obama campaign functionary Stephanie Cutter from claiming on MSNBC Thursday that “There’s no delicate way to put this, but he lied. He blatantly lied—and brazenly.”
Coming from a specialist in the form, perhaps that was meant as a compliment, but then again all this is an enormous exercise in missing the point. Mr. Ryan wasn’t saying Mr. Obama should have saved this particular plant, as if it were akin to the sea levels that he promised to command in his inaugural address. Mr. Ryan was mocking the President who promised on the record and apparently believed he could save the plant.
At a campaign event at the Janesville factory in 2008 on “a clean energy economy,” Mr. Obama praised its workers for “how many hybrids and fuel-efficient vehicles you’re churning out.” He added: “And I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to retool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years.”
In October of the same year, when Mr. Obama paid another visit, he promised that “As president, I will lead an effort to retool plants like the GM facility in Janesville so we can build the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow and create good-paying jobs in Wisconsin and all across America.”
In other words, this is another familiar Obama adventure in industrial policy: The government will tell auto makers what kind of cars they should manufacture, even if they’re not the kind of cars consumers want to buy. For the record, all that talk of “retooling” is because the Janesville plant used to make the trucks and SUVs that are being driven from the market in part by $4 gasoline and rising fuel-efficiency standards.
This Obama model of central planning helps explain why there are fewer good-paying jobs not only in Janesville but all across America.
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