Where’s Lumpy?

In my “GOP Comeback Fail” post, I lampooned Saul Anuzis, GOP-chair-wannabe, for spamming me with an email call-to-arms littered with Twitter, Facebook, etc. links.  The email suggested that one of the GOP’s problems is that it failed to leverage technology to reach voters.  To drive home the point, the email included a broken link to Mr. Anuzis own website.

Todd from When In The Course bet me 10 bucks in the comments section that Mr. Anuzis, as a Michigan Republican, favors the auto bailout.  I didn’t take him up on that bet, and it’s a good thing.  In his “Open Letter to the GOP” ( <– unlike the one spammed to me, this one actually works), Mr. Anuzis opines:

We were once the party of fiscal responsibility. But when members of our own party led the way in pork barrel spending, which led to the fattest federal budget in history, America lost faith in our party.

And we were once the party that had convinced America that we “shared their values”. But when Republican after Republican was exposed as a hypocrite that said one thing on the campaign trail and behaved a different way in their personal life, America lost faith in our party.

Surely Mr. Anuzis would do the fiscally responsible thing and not saddle the rest of the country with bailing out the Big Three.  Surely he’d be against lobbying for pork barrel benefits to his Michigan constituency.  If he did, he’d be exposed as a hypocrite, right?

Here is Saul Anuzis’ hypocrisy in the pages of the Wall Street Journal for all the world to see:

Michigan today is facing a crisis that is more severe than the troubles afflicting the economy as a whole. Since 2000, employment in the state’s auto sector has been cut in half, manufacturing employment is down by one third, and total wage and salary employment has fallen by one-tenth. If Detroit’s Big Three auto makers collapse, as many as three million jobs nationwide, mostly in the Midwest, could be lost.

Getting down to the nub of it, the proposed auto-maker bailout is an opportunity for leadership. Along with a cash infusion, to really affect a turnaround Congress must also provide relief from arbitrary, conflicting and counterproductive regulations that hamstring our auto makers. I’m thinking of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, but there are others. Regulatory reform should be a no-brainer for an industry in crisis, which means it’s up to Republicans to fight for it.

Mr. Anuzis, you are the problem with the Republican Party.  You are a big-spending, pork-barrel-begging, hypocrite.  Don’t worry, though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have your back.

Thanks Todd.  I owe you $10, not because I lost the bet, but for the blog fodder.