It's Ford or Foreign from Now On (UPDATED AGAIN)

I've been wondering how Obama was going to sell Democrat cars to Republicans. Now that Chrysler and GM are puppets of the administration and the UAW owns and operates them, Republican car buyers must realize that an even larger portion of the purchase price of a new car is going to fund Democrat candidates and issues. As a result, they'll turn to alternatives that have less rent-seeking baggage. Megan McArdle observed a month ago that Ford is feeling really good:

Meanwhile, the folks at Ford have to be awfully glad they didn't take government money. They've apparently gotten quite a brand boost out of it, with a large number of their current customers trading in Chrysler or GM cars for a piece of the company that isn't teetering on the edge of receivership. It's not that Ford's future is necessarily that bright--but taking billions from the government sends a strong signal that there might be a problem with your cars in the future.

Now it looks like the Obama administration pressured Chrysler to make the dealer cuts and may have influenced which dealers are being shutdown. Doug Ross has the most complete coverage I've seen including complete lists of the dealers both cut and kept. If true, this represents a thuggish turn in Obama's brand of crony capitalism.

So, how is Car King Obama going to make up the revenue shortfall? Perhaps twead-jacketed, ivory tower lefties will be given "company" cars in lieu of a raise next year. They'll still drive their VWs and Volvos to work, of course. The GM and Chrysler zombies will be animated with student tuition and government grant dollars.

Cut Dealers:

This is a partial, crowd sourced solution. You are the crowd, so thanks in advance for helping out:

1. Check the comments for the name you'd like to search--make sure no one's already done them and go in order down the list.
2. Add a comment below to say that you're working on so-n-so--heck, claim three names at once if you want
   
3. Click so-n-so's link--it's best to open it in a new window or tab so you can refer back here
   
4. Check 2006, 2008, and 2010
   
5. Enter the code at the bottom of the search page and run the search
6. If the search doesn't return anyone, remove the zip and re-run
7. If the search still doesn't return anyone, remove the state and re-run
8. Look for so-n-so in the results
9. Add up all their donations by year and party
   
10. Add a comment below with so-n-so's full name and donation information
    

The links below were generated from the PDF of cut dealers linked by Doug Ross. The idea is that the link will pre-fill the opensecrets.org search form. I did this fast, so lots of things may be a little wrong--I know some of the zips are only four digits for instance. These people may not live in the zipcode or state that I specify.

Thanks again for your help! I will make the results available in a text file or spreadsheet when I can.

Update: I missed some cut dealers. It was late... I'll link those in a new post soon. I'll also get to the "kept" list, but you probably wont see that before Thursday morning. Special thanks to the Gateway Pundit for supplying the crowd! And many thanks to our hardworking crowd. cathy you sooo rock!

Update 2: After completing the cut list, I took a closer look at OpenSecrets and discovered that I can download their data tables. I'm in the process of doing that and will post my results for cut and kept dealers as soon as I can (not before late tonight and bet on the weekend for the kept list).

Update 3: Removed the list so this post wouldn't be so cluttered. You can download my Excel spreadsheet with the data here. I've done a follow-up where I analyze the correlation between states that voted for Obama and the dealer cuts (hint: no correlation). I highly recommend Doug Ross's post about partisan bias in the closings. Thanks again for all the help!