RALPH NADER: IRRELEVANT AT ANY SPEED?[NOTE: GET THE FRESHEST POSTS ON ELECTION 2008, MIKE HUCKABEE AND MORE "TRUTH WITH SPEEDZZTER" HERE]Conservatives shouldn’t get too excited about the entry of the automobile-hating perennial presidential candidate Ralph Nader into the 2008 presidential contest. As a gentleman,
"Iron Mike" Huckabee welcomed Ralph into the race.
But an Associated Press story on Nader’s announcement repeated the Democratic party talking point that his candidacy will have
“little impact.”Democratic activists, of course, still bristle at the votes Nader took in 2000 from “Algore” in Florida.Nader’s last run in 2004 netted only about three-tenths of one percent of the popular vote. The on-the-ropes “
Ma Ferguson” of the Mule Primary –
Hillary Rodham Clinton (“HRC”) – said Ralph Nader is a “passing fancy” who is “[o]bviously not helpful to whomever our Democratic nominee is."
[Presumably, HRC’s dismissal of Nader does not turn on what the meaning of “is is.”] The Democratic “messiah,”
Barack Hussein Obama, ripped Nader a bit harder:
“ [Nader] thought that there was no difference between Al Gore and George Bush and eight years later, I think people realize that Ralph did not know what he was talking about.”
Now that doesn’t sound too “post partisan,” does it? However, as Watergate convict and talk show host
G. Gordon Liddy often says
“a stopped clock is right twice a day.”
Motorist voters, automobile enthusiasts, racers, hot rodders and gearheads have known for decades that Ralph Nader often “did not know what he was talking about.” For example, Nader -- who rocketed to national fame in the mid 1960s with the anti-Detroit automaker book
“Unsafe At Any Speed” – wrote in 2002 an outrageous jacket endorsement for the interesting, but deeply flawed Keith Bradsher book
HIGH AND MIGHTY – SUVs: The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles And How They Got That Way. Nader opined:
“High and Mighty documents how thousands of Americans are dying or being seriously injured every year by the growing menace of those monstrosities called SUVs– in reality overpriced, hoked-up pickup trucks. Keith Bradsher [who by the way was a “bureau chief” for the hyper-liberal New York Times back in 2002] tells the gripping, sordid story of the domestic auto industry’s callousness, cover-up, deception and greed. Deliberately marketed as objects of narcissism, these gas-guzzling, pollution-belching SUVs – ever bigger, wasteful and unsafe – are fueling what Bradsher calls a ‘highway arms race.’ . . . Not since 1965 [when Nader’s sensationalist screed “Unsafe at Any Speed” was published] has any book delivered such a haymaker to the Detroit auto giants. Let’s hope corrective action takes place for the sake of life, limb and our nation’s environmental and energy security.”
Apparently Ralph Nader’s never heard of imported SUVs, such as the Toyota Land Cruiser, Toyota Highlander, Lexus LX-450, Lexus LX-470 . . . . Or maybe Ralph somehow believes that Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Isuzu and Mitsubishi are “Detroit auto giants?” Of course Nader’s inability to see past Detroit is legendary.
Although the ubiquitous counter-cultural icons of personal transportation in the 1960s – rear-engine Volkswagen Beetles and Kombi/Microbus vans had virtually the same swing-arm rear suspensions and resulting “jacking” and oversteering tendencies as the 1960-1963 Chevrolet Corvair,
Nader mostly gave VW a pass. It is good to know that the aging and increasingly irrelevant Ralph Nader believes honest, hard-working, law-abiding consumers exercising their freedom of choice in the American vehicle marketplace are "narcissists" and menaces on the highway . . . . Of course, Nader’s hatred for SUVs, the consumers who choose SUVs as the vehicles best meeting their needs, and the “callous, deceptive, greedy” domestic auto manufacturers who sell them probably isn’t all that much different in practical effect from either of the
“nanny-state” Democrats who are still “fighting” for the 2008 presidential nomination.
Barack Hussein Obama wants to jack up Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards to as much as SEVENTY miles per gallon! (Not too many “menacing monstrosities” or “overpriced, hoked-up pickup trucks” would fit into an Obama vehicle mix). HRC also wants massive increases in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards and corresponding huge reductions in the vehicle choices available in the American market.[For an entertaining and enlightening look about how liberals (and Democrats) "feel" about SUVs and consumer vehicle "choice" in the marketplace, see "JOHN EDWARDS AND THE SOCIAL JIHAD AGAINST SUVs.] The delicious irony in all of this is that consumer affection for SUVs is a direct, market-based result of policies championed by Nader and his meddling band of Nader’s Raiders. The
horrible, neutered American cars of the 1970s bore the ugly scars of Ralph Nader’s safety and environmental activism.
The Corporate Average Fuel Economy law then virtually finished off traditional automobiles, by forcing them to become so small and incapable as to deprive them of much of their utility for many consumers. Light trucks and SUVs merely filled in the void left by the “death” of the sorts of automobiles millions of Americans needed and wanted.
Nader’s Raider Joan Claybrook – when she was an official in the Carter Administration– compounded the “problem.”
Keith Bradsher reports in
HIGH AND MIGHTY that:
“Claybrook and her staff were aware that automakers were evading the fuel-economy rules by making their light trucks heavier and set out to address the problem. . . . Claybrook had choice: she could . . . set a modest increase in how many miles per gallon the average light truck could be required to go on [a] gallon of gas, or she could raise the [weight ] limit only to 8,500 pounds [gross vehicle weight rating (“GVWR”)] and raise the mileage standard a little more.”
Claybrook chose to go for the maximum possible average fuel economy increase for light trucks up to 8,500 GVWR, which required exempting light trucks between 8,501 and 10,000 GVWR.
Claybrook's regulatory scheme led to the reduction in powertrain choices and practical work capability for trucks below 8,500 GVWR. Thus, the market rationally responded by increasing the popularity of the fully capable trucks over 8,500 GVWR. In short, the increased popularity of trucks over 8,500 GVWR and of SUVs was a
direct and foreseeable consequence of Nader’s regulatory interference in the vehicle marketplace. Undoubtedly, the draconian regulations that Obama and HRC –
which are all in the big-government-knows-best tradition that Ralph Nader helped build – will lead to similar, wholly unintended market-based reactions and corrections.
But one difference between Nader and Democrats HRC and Obamais that the Democrats both want to pander for the votes of jittery United Auto Workers union members by
redistributing hundreds of millions of dollars for the development of tiny “green” phonebooth cars that consumers will be forced into by the heavy hand of government regulation. HRC and Obama hope that such subsidy payments will assuage the growing realization that the
unfunded mandates against Detroit of the 1970s and the unwanted, highly-compromised vehicles which resulted from such mandates played a central, catalytic role in the precipitous decline of the American auto industry over the past three decades. Nader, in stark contrast, simply does not hide his Manichean view that corporations and “corporate welfare” schemes are one of the reasons that
“most people are disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties.” Given Nader’s forty year “jihad” against the “Detroit auto makers”
(in cahoots with his liberal trial lawyer buddies) it’s hard to see him signing on for any government subsidies of them whatsoever.
Nader’s radical left-wing rants, however, aren’t limited to demonizing SUVs:
“You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized, disrespected . . . You go from Iraq, to Palestine/Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of the Bush Administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts.” Thus, Ralph Nader represents almost the best of both worlds for the Democrats.Nader can blast the “present system” and call for radical “change” without threatening to take votes away from the Democrats.
More important for conservatives to recognize is that Nader actually can provide some “cover” for Obama on the left.
Nader’s harsh anti-corporate, us-versus-them rhetoric can make Obama’s breezy prose look relatively “mainstream” and “moderate” by comparison, even if the resulting policy positions are relatively similar. Nader, therefore, provides Obama with a sort of economic
“Sister Souljah” opportunity. Obama can criticize Nader’s hard-line extremism, judgment and tone without abandoning the substance of Obama’s similar policy choices.
Nader’s run may be motivated out of a growing sense that he’s becoming irrelevant and that modern liberalism is too willing to “lie down with” corporate interests. And while Nader is likely not much of a spoiler factor anymore at the ballot box, Conservatives should be wary that Nader provides an extreme voice which Obama will use to make himself look more moderate and “post partisan.” [SPEEDZZTER FLASHBACK: All of this talk about aging, automobile-hating, liberal "has-beens" such as Ralph Nader and Joan Claybrook reminded Speedzzter of a post on "Truth with Speedzzter" proposing a number of new "Gearhead television shows:" The Activist’s Life" (TV) – Car-hating safety and environmental activists (such as Ralph Nader, Joan Claybrook) actively participate in Goodguys events, NMRA races, rod runs, NASCAR, the SEMA Show and the Hot Rod Power Tour. (And who wouldn’t want to do a poker run with Joan or Ralph?)
That idea still sounds better than most of what the formerly striking television and movie writers are pushing . . . .]
Labels: Barack Obama, CAFE, Fuel Economy, Hillary Clinton, Ralph Nader, SUVs
