Everyone in Janesville, Wisconsin — even Zombie Eddie Munster — seems to grasp the reality that the General Motors plant really closed Dec. 23, 2008. Even the hyperthyroidic lying marathoner recognized the end of an era when he issued a statement to that effect.
But Ryan walked out onto that stage in Tampa and lied to advance a point where he could falsely link a comment Obama made as a candidate w/ the plant which closed before he took office.
What's worse is that Ryan just repeated the lie this morning on Good Morning America.
In order to believe Lyin Ryan, you have to lose all ability to grasp reading comprehension — that is what Barack Obama actually said to the plant workers in February, 2008. And then you have to ignore the actual history.
Follow me below the Fleur de Kos for details about why this is like arguing when the American Revolution ended.
I didn't even think of this analogy until I was typing in a comment on Laura Clawson's Weasel Ryan post this morning. Allow me to explain.
Like the recognized date that people around Janesville accept for the plant closing, virtually everyone with a brain would agree that the successful siege and subsequent surrender by the British at Yorktown on Oct. 19, 1781 ended the American Revolution. But au contraire, the war did not really end until the signing of the Treaty of Paris, nearly two years later, on Sept. 3, 1783.
It is as if Ryan is trying to say that the Treaty of Paris took place before the siege of Yorktown and that the siege was an egregious violation of the Geneva Convention.
Sarah Kiff does a good job explaining for the conceptually-challenged that even when a plant closes, it takes time to wind down.
Lacking a bailout, the plant closes. The plant holds a “final goodbye ceremony” as it builds its last SUV. In a statement to MSNBC, GM confirmed that the plant “was idled” in December. But — and this is where it gets confusing — winding down a plant takes time.
The Janesville plant builds its last medium-duty truck (on April 21, 2009) and shuts down its last assembly line, completing the shutdown process started in June 2008.
The specifics of the shutdown for anyone who can read are easy to follow so long as you don't
retroactively blame President Obama.
Starting w/ the speech in February, Obama says, ”I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years.” As Politifact writes, “That’s a statement of belief that, with government help, the Janesville plant could remain open — but not a promise to keep it open.”
Keep in mind that that promise was also conditional on GM retool to transition into building more energy efficient cars and not light trucks and SUVs. Moreover, the summer of 2008 was a crushing blow for SUV and truck demand as $5 gasoline was a sobering reality. In short, very few people were buying SUVs and light trucks in the months before the Market Meltdown in September, 2008.
General Motors announced in June, 2008 they were closing the plant in Janesville. To his credit, Ryan did try to help the plant stay open. OTOH, it exposed alleged Randian Ryan as a fraud because he was seeking government intervention into a private industry, picking winners and losers, which conservatives argued the Obama Administration shouldn't do in the case of Solyndra.
While these negotiations went on, GM was in desperate need of cash. This led to a bridge loan by the Bush Administration. Now the date of this loan is key: Dec. 18, 2008 — less than a week before the actual closing.
I would be remiss to not point out that Senate Republicans obstructed an earlier loan that might have come just in time. Not only that, Mr. Let Detroit go Bankrupt, Willard Romney, was publicly opposed to the loan.
But it takes someone who is pathological and oblivious to lie to the very same people who actually endured the plant closing. I don't know about you, but when more than 2600 workers are laid off, leaving a skeleton crew of 57, even though the lights are on, it looks closed.
And while I am not from the Midwest, I do know what an actual closing of an auto plant looks like. I grew up in northern New Jersey and Ford used to have a plant in Mahwah on Route 17. My family often passed by the plant on our way to the New York State Thruway. When you drove by, the parking lot was as big as that of a stadium. The plant closed in 1980. After that, the parking lot looked even bigger empty. And so it goes...
Update: Per Greg Sargent:
After the plant was shut down he said he would lead an effort to retool the plant to get people back to work. They’re still not back to work,” he said. “I really ask the 23 million people George who are struggling to find work in America today if we’re better off than we were four years ago?”
In fact, Lyin Ryan came up w/ line to counter that of VP Biden," GM isn't alive in my hometown." As a slogan, it's not bad, but again, to believe it, means you must have suspension of disbelief.