By David Surace

12.16.2008

With all the hubbub about Detroit automakers’ last desperate clutches at an increasingly slippery bailout package, it might be easy to forget about an industry that is well within the blast radius of any auto industry collapse: NASCAR.

Within the folds of Auto Racing Daily’s NASCAR editorials, for instance, I’m starting to detect an acute sense of frustration and anger at the seeming betrayal of Southeastern Republican politicians, whose voting base–frequent Detroit auto owners, by the way–is the one to which NASCAR predominantly caters. Without GM, Chrysler and Ford, NASCAR would be nothing but a Toyota spec racing series, if anything at all. Whether you like NASCAR or not, that is a sad state of affairs.

Anyway, according to the feelings of some conservatives, perhaps the lesser of two evils would be to allow those companies to die a glorious and bloody death on the pristine plains of the free market, thereby officially closing the book on their past sins, rather than to be castrated slowly by the greedy hands of a Democrat-controlled government. Why, they’ll be forced to make “green” vehicles, little tweet-tweet hybrids with huge, bulbous “faces” to keep jaywalkers from getting bruised while carrying their soy lattes to the Haight-Ashbury Human Be-In, don’t you just know it. Continue Reading →