The GOP kisses the Rust Belt goodbye

Do the Republicans ever plan to win Michigan again? How about Ohio, Illinois or even Indiana?

Before the gang of GOP senators killed the $14 billion bridge loan for Chrysler and General Motors last week, they unleashed an ugly Southern snobbery about us Rust Belt rubes. And they just might have strangled their chances in here for years to come.

Let's not forget the GOP just lost the entire region to the man who will become the first African-American president, save for West Virginia. The Republicans only have one governorship here, in Indiana. Evidently, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell & Co. want to finish the job.

So they decided to bludgeon the Big Three while they were down and suffocate the United Auto Workers while they were at it.

Maybe they sincerely believe the domestic autos will be better off in bankruptcy. Maybe they expected President Bush to come to the rescue all along. Maybe they really think Honda and Toyota plants in their states would blossom if the domestics died, even though company executives warned they'd suffer because many of their suppliers would go under.

Maybe they were genuinely offended by the idea of the government messing with capitalism, although that didn't stop many of them from dumping $700 billion in the laps of Wall Street investment bankers.

But a leaked memo from the Senate GOP reveals it was all about politics and payback to the unions: "Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it."

So much for principle. It's nice to know that our friends from Dixie were willing to play Russian roulette with 3 million jobs, spark a depression in the Midwest and cost taxpayers four times as much money as we'd be out with the bridge loan. Why not? Serves the evil UAW right.

Look, the loan is unpopular nationally, so this may be a good tactic. But it is insanely poor strategy if Republicans want to stay competitive in the Rust Belt and its pool of 151 electoral votes.

You can't just write off a region and expect to be a national party. That's why Barack Obama competed hard in the South and West. It paid off when he piled up an electoral landslide and padded Democrats' margins in Congress.

Michigan Republican Party Chair Saul Anuzis gets this. His main appeal in his quest to head the Republican National Committee is that he's only guy who knows how to get Reagan Democrats back.

Presumably, it's not by stripping them of jobs and sneering that it's their fault.

Midwest Democrats will retaliate in kind for the Big Three and are chomping at the bit to finish off Republicans in 2010 and beyond.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm is already on the attack, blasting senators willing to risk a depression as "un-American" and questioning their loyalty to foreign companies at the expense of U.S. workers. It's a crude rhetorical flourish on steroids, but it's enough to earn a megaphone on "Meet the Press." That kind of red-blooded American chest-beating puts her on the offensive and makes Republicans spluttering to defend their taupe Toyota Camrys look like girly-men.

Translation: Democrats strong and patriotic. Republicans weak and love foreigners. Shamelessly jingoistic, sure, but it effectively flips the post-9/11 conventional wisdom on its head.

Meanwhile, just where are the Republicans? Yes, the entire Michigan delegation voted for the $14 billion, save for U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, who claims he was recovering from surgery. But why have GOP leaders been avoiding TV cameras like the plague? You can't keep Granholm; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Detroit; or Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Royal Oak, off the news.

The notable exception is U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, co-chair of the Congressional Auto Caucus, but he's largely preferred to operate behind the scenes.

Most have opted for silent support as the Big Three teeter at the abyss. You can point to a blog post by U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Harrison Township, here, or an op-ed by Attorney General Mike Cox there, but there's no real face of the GOP during this crisis.

This would seem to be the perfect time for one state Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, to grab the spotlight, as he'd like Cox's job and could use some positive press. Indeed, the White House has pushed him to do it. But despite backing the Big Three, he seems paralyzed about taking the lead, almost as much as he is about setting an agenda in the Legislature.

The result is a power vacuum, with Granholm often battling Mitt Romney in the national media. Republicans, do you really want the guy who doesn't care if Detroit dies, who last lived in Michigan when polyester pants were groovy, as your mouthpiece? Come on. He's not even going to merit an invite to your county Lincoln Day dinner.

This is a chance for Republicans to remake their image after two straight electoral thumpings. What's good for Michigan could be very good for the GOP -- but no one seems to have gotten that memo.

The GOP kisses the Rust Belt goodbye

Do the Republicans ever plan to win Michigan again? How about Ohio, Illinois or even Indiana?

Before the gang of GOP senators killed the $14 billion bridge loan for Chrysler and General Motors last week, they unleashed an ugly Southern snobbery about us Rust Belt rubes. And they just might have strangled their chances in here for years to come.

Let's not forget the GOP just lost the entire region to the man who will become the first African-American president, save for West Virginia. The Republicans only have one governorship here, in Indiana. Evidently, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell & Co. want to finish the job.

So they decided to bludgeon the Big Three while they were down and suffocate the United Auto Workers while they were at it.

Maybe they sincerely believe the domestic autos will be better off in bankruptcy. Maybe they expected President Bush to come to the rescue all along. Maybe they really think Honda and Toyota plants in their states would blossom if the domestics died, even though company executives warned they'd suffer because many of their suppliers would go under.

Maybe they were genuinely offended by the idea of the government messing with capitalism, although that didn't stop many of them from dumping $700 billion in the laps of Wall Street investment bankers.

But a leaked memo from the Senate GOP reveals it was all about politics and payback to the unions: "Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it."

So much for principle. It's nice to know that our friends from Dixie were willing to play Russian roulette with 3 million jobs, spark a depression in the Midwest and cost taxpayers four times as much money as we'd be out with the bridge loan. Why not? Serves the evil UAW right.

Look, the loan is unpopular nationally, so this may be a good tactic. But it is insanely poor strategy if Republicans want to stay competitive in the Rust Belt and its pool of 151 electoral votes.

You can't just write off a region and expect to be a national party. That's why Barack Obama competed hard in the South and West. It paid off when he piled up an electoral landslide and padded Democrats' margins in Congress.

Michigan Republican Party Chair Saul Anuzis gets this. His main appeal in his quest to head the Republican National Committee is that he's only guy who knows how to get Reagan Democrats back.

Presumably, it's not by stripping them of jobs and sneering that it's their fault.

Midwest Democrats will retaliate in kind for the Big Three and are chomping at the bit to finish off Republicans in 2010 and beyond.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm is already on the attack, blasting senators willing to risk a depression as "un-American" and questioning their loyalty to foreign companies at the expense of U.S. workers. It's a crude rhetorical flourish on steroids, but it's enough to earn a megaphone on "Meet the Press." That kind of red-blooded American chest-beating puts her on the offensive and makes Republicans spluttering to defend their taupe Toyota Camrys look like girly-men.

Translation: Democrats strong and patriotic. Republicans weak and love foreigners. Shamelessly jingoistic, sure, but it effectively flips the post-9/11 conventional wisdom on its head.

Meanwhile, just where are the Republicans? Yes, the entire Michigan delegation voted for the $14 billion, save for U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, who claims he was recovering from surgery. But why have GOP leaders been avoiding TV cameras like the plague? You can't keep Granholm; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Detroit; or Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Royal Oak, off the news.

The notable exception is U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, co-chair of the Congressional Auto Caucus, but he's largely preferred to operate behind the scenes.

Most have opted for silent support as the Big Three teeter at the abyss. You can point to a blog post by U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Harrison Township, here, or an op-ed by Attorney General Mike Cox there, but there's no real face of the GOP during this crisis.

This would seem to be the perfect time for one state Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, to grab the spotlight, as he'd like Cox's job and could use some positive press. Indeed, the White House has pushed him to do it. But despite backing the Big Three, he seems paralyzed about taking the lead, almost as much as he is about setting an agenda in the Legislature.

The result is a power vacuum, with Granholm often battling Mitt Romney in the national media. Republicans, do you really want the guy who doesn't care if Detroit dies, who last lived in Michigan when polyester pants were groovy, as your mouthpiece? Come on. He's not even going to merit an invite to your county Lincoln Day dinner.

This is a chance for Republicans to remake their image after two straight electoral thumpings. What's good for Michigan could be very good for the GOP -- but no one seems to have gotten that memo.

McCain's not-so-secret plan to lose Michigan

ROCHESTER HILLS - Say you're running for president and dropping by the most economically ravaged state in the nation.

Your Democratic rivals are too busy butchering one another to campaign here, much less notice 7.2 percent unemployment, record foreclosures and skyrocketing demand at local food banks.

So naturally, you'd give a speech on child pornography and human trafficking around the world, right?

It's not that John McCain's 20-minute indictment of these heinous crimes at Oakland University on Wednesday wasn't admirable.

But it was a speech you deliver outside the United Nations, not a few miles from Delphi world headquarters, which just emerged from bankruptcy after shuttering factories and slashing wages in half for many autoworkers.

In Michigan, it's the economy, stupid.

Republican after Republican I talked to, including McCain's most diehard supporters, were floored by the misstep. He has a great shot at winning the Mitten State thanks to a botched Democratic primary, but his advisers seem intent on blowing it.

Most of the 700 attendees stared at McCain with slack-jawed politeness before the town hall portion, in which they hungrily fired off questions about jobs, the Iraq war, fuel-economy standards and even his temper (to which he drolly shot back, "How dare you ask me that question").

My man McCain, whom I proudly voted for in the Jan. 15 primary, is not a born orator. He gives a tired, rambling speech with the same awkward punchlines ("The French now have a pro-American president, which shows that if you live long enough, anything can happen") he unfurled back in the start of primary season.

He also took a long layover in Panderville to appease a crowd more conservative than he, filled with party activists who voted for Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee and cried for days when Mighty Mac crushed them. McCain's lines about trial lawyers, conservative judges, victory in Iraq and nuclear power won cheers; his straight talk on global warming was met with crickets.

Even the barebones traveling press corps seemed exhausted and cranky, perhaps knowing the A-Team was having a blast covering the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama smackdown. During the heat of the Michigan primary, I wanted to break out the popcorn as Time magazine columnists Joe Klein and Ana Marie Cox sniped over who got to cover McCain in Howell.

In Rochester Hills, the only person who looked like he wanted to be there was Michigan Co-Chair Chuck Yob, who held court at the jumbled affair for more than an hour before McCain arrived.

McCain has a window to define himself in Michigan. Democratic hopefuls have barely stepped foot here since National Committeewoman Debbie Dingell hatched her harebrained primary scheme that cost the state every delegate, a mess they're still trying to mop up.

He failed this week. He failed when he turned down the keynote address at the influential Mackinac Policy Conference this month to do a fundraiser in Grand Rapids. McCain's not going to get that many more chances before the Dems (finally) get their act together.

If you want to know why the virtually nonexistent McCain Michigan campaign is wheezing, look no further than Yob, a knee-jerk reactionary who miraculously hung onto his job after spouting off that women make fine secretaries of state "because they like that sort of work."

Yob and his boy, John Patrick, launched a boneheaded West Michigan strategy (their only strategy) that handed McCain a 9-point primary loss. Keep in mind that McCain won a stunning upset here against George W. Bush in 2000, back when his campaign was headed by the brilliant former U.S. Rep. Joe Schwarz.

The Yobs are completely tone-deaf when it comes to Oakland County, which will be the key to a McCain victory in November. Where was iconic County Executive L. Brooks Patterson on Wednesday? Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop couldn't even make it back to his district because the event was scheduled at the exact same time as session.

That's who you want on stage, not state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk, R-Kalamazoo, the sacrificial right-wing lamb praying to break 40 percent against U.S. Sen. Carl Levin this fall.

What's best for McCain would be turning the Yobs loose to pursue their true passion, polarizing the party and making state Chair Saul Anuzis' life miserable (sorry, Saul, I'm rootin' for you).

When Chuckie was making noises about running for party chair in 2004, Attorney General Mike Cox adeptly surmised it would be disastrous because "he's more concerned with party elections than with beating Democrats." Cox went on to be McCain's state chair, only to quit last summer after chafing with the Yob West Michigan mafia.

What McCain should do now is aggressively court powerbrokers like Patterson, Bishop and U.S. Rep. Candice Miller to be his ambassadors in Southeast Michigan. And he should give his old friend Joe Schwarz a call and beg him to run the show again, since he's about the only credible moderate voice left here who could woo votes away from Obama.

That's just good politics if you're serious about winning Michigan. Your move, McCain.

Can Granholm pass the Kwame test?

“I’m a mother. I’m used to cleaning up other people’s messes.”

That’s long been Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s disarming reply to Michigan’s record unemployment, billion-dollar budget deficits and loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

Of course it’s not her fault (picture a certain rotund Republican governor who preceded her) but by golly, Granholm is going mop up the muck and set the Mitten State on a path anew.

Well, governor, have we got a mess for you.

The stench left by Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s 12 indictments (eight of them felonies) this week for perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy has engulfed the state.

This isn’t a sex scandal. I know, those racy text messages of Kwame and his paramour/former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty (“And did you miss me, sexually?”) are on permanent loop on national TV. The Eliot Spitzer hooker extravaganza is sooo old, since the New York gov actually had the gumption to resign, so Kwame’s office boot-knocking is getting its due.

Whatever. What this is really about is Detroit and the state of Michigan.

It’s about hizzoner’s spending spree of more than $9 million of the city’s money to cover up firing police officers (the less titillating, but far more damning of the 14,000 text messages). Police had allegedly uncovered abuses in Kwame’s posse/security detail (all former altar boys, natch) and a certain wild party at the Manoogian Mansion that Attorney General Mike Cox dubbed an “urban legend.”

Cox’s investigation was less than thorough, as documents from the Michigan State Police now show, so expect more revelations on that front. And perhaps we’ll all find out why Coxie was so chummy with Kwame and if it has anything to do with the AG’s burning desire to live in the governor’s mansion in 2010.

As always in politics, it’s the cover-up that did Kilpatrick in. He lied about his affair under oath, as well as planning to sack the cops. The proof is there in black and white.

The outrage is that a city as economically bludgeoned as Detroit is being bilked by a corrupt mayor who feels no shame in treating his hometown like a brothel and making residents pick up the tab.

Motown has never recovered from the flight of the industrial base or the riots of 1967 – blocks of buildings resembling bombed-out Baghdad testify to that. Infant mortality and literacy rates are on par with third-world countries.

It is a travesty for Detroit, once a beacon of hope on the Underground Railroad and the source of inspiration for Henry Ford, to have become America’s living symbol of urban decay.

Kilpatrick tried to turn that image around and masterfully wooed the business community. But now we’re told that those efforts somehow should absolve him of essentially pilfering city coffers (and of his felonies) and keep him on the job.

Since he has no defense, he’s adopted the last refuge of scoundrels: Lash out at the media for reporting his misdeeds and make this about race (“I’ve been called (the n-word) more than anytime in my entire life.”)

This is sad and shameful and we all pay the price. Because whether you live in Benzie or Battle Creek, we’re all Detroiters, baby. What’s the first thing entrepreneurs think about Michigan nowadays? Kwame is the 300-pound, diamond-studded elephant in the room.

You can live in denial that our crumbling core city doesn’t affect you - but the rest of the world knows otherwise.

So should Kwame Kilpatrick stay or should he go? How is this even a question?

The biggest favor Kilpatrick could do for the city and state he claims to love is walk away. We’re struggling enough with 7.2 percent unemployment and record foreclosures, thank you very much.

But that ain’t gonna happen. So it’s up to Granholm to whip out the industrial Hoover and vacuum up the manure.

The governor does have the power to oust the frat-boy mayor, plain and simple. She denies that, but her narrow reading of the Michigan Constitution smacks of someone who skirts politically thorny decisions at all costs.

Anyone paying attention to six years of budget crises knows that. It’s clear to anyone who’s heard Granholm’s soaring rhetoric about education and watched her gut college funding up until this year.

Jenny doesn’t like to pull the trigger.

Look, this isn’t easy. Kwame’s a fallen star in her own party from the fiercest Democratic stronghold in the state (and one of the biggest in the country). But it would show tremendous leadership.

And it’s the right thing to do. It is crucial for Michigan - we all need to move on from the mayor’s wanton criminality and national humiliation.

This is a key test for Granholm and Democrats. Stop whining that you’re cleaning up John Engler’s mess and wipe out one of your own.