Conspiracy to Close Dissident Car Dealers Mocked by White House, Debunked by Blog

At yesterday's White House Press Briefing, Robert Gibbs fielded a question from Major Garrett about a blog-launched conspiracy theory that suggested that the Obama administration had exercised it's authority to shut down car dealers who disagree with the President. Gibbs answered the question, and in the process, took a shot at blogs as news sources:



Gibbs needn't have answered like that, since another blog, Nate Silver's 538.com, handily debunked the story. Still, I wish Gibbs had responded to Garrett by saying, "Let me go talk it over with my Sales Manager..."

The theory was that a large percentage of the dealerships that Chrysler closed were owned by Republican donors. The problem, as Nate notes, is that most car dealers are Republicans: (h/t C&L)

Overall, 88 percent of the contributions from car dealers went to Republican candidates and just 12 percent to Democratic candidates. By comparison, the list of dealers on Doug Ross's list (which I haven't vetted, but I assume is fine) gave 92 percent of their money to Republicans -- not really a significant difference.

There's no conspiracy here, folks -- just some bad math.

It shouldn't be any surprise, by the way, that car dealers tend to vote -- and donate -- Republican. They are usually male, they are usually older (you don't own an auto dealership in your 20s), and they have obvious reasons to be pro-business, pro-tax cut, anti-green energy and anti-labor.

One of my Tweeps asked me to look at the story yesterday, smelling a rat, but I didn't have a chance to before the briefing. This reminds me a lot of the recent "reversal rate" attack on Sonia Sotomayor, another case in which a seemingly damning stat evaporated upon application of context, again by Nate Silver.

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