Apparently. Doug Ross:

“How did the U.S. government’s “car czar” decide which Chrysler dealers to close and which would remain open? No one appears to know, not even the President of Chrysler:

…Lawyer Leonard Bellavia, of Bellavia Gentile & Associates, who represents some of the terminated dealers, said he deposed Chrysler President Jim Press on Tuesday and came away with the impression that Press did not support the plan…

“It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers,” Bellavia said. “It really wasn’t Chrysler’s decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President’s automotive task force.”

Follow the evidence trail, below, and judge for yourself.

Dealers on the closing list donated millions to Republicans, $200 for Obama
The initial pass at the list of shuttered dealers showed they had donated, in the aggregate, millions to Republican candidates and PACs and a total of $200 to Barack Obama.

In fact, I have thus far found only a single Obama donor ($200 from Jeffrey Hunter of Waco, Texas) on the closing list.

Another review of all 789 closing dealerships, by WND, found $450,000 donated to GOP presidential candidates; $7,970 to Sen. Hillary Clinton; $2,200 to John Edwards and $450 to Barack Obama.

Now, and this is important, Chrysler claimed that its formula for determining whether a dealership should close or not included “sales volume, customer service scores, local market share and average household income in the immediate area.”

Dealer Jim Anderer told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto he can’t comprehend how his dealership can be among those killed: he stated that his sales volume ranking is in the top 2 percent of all dealers.

Lefty blogs are not convinced – but of course! But then they were all about the firings of US Attorney’s and there wasn’t half this much to the story.

Steve BeNen (did I pronounce it right?) quips:

“And what is the “evidence” of a partisan conspiracy that “appears to be mounting”? As you might have guessed, like most conservative theories, this one is extremely thin. The argument, in a nutshell, is that Chrysler dealers owned by a variety of Republican donors are being closed, the government is now involved with Chrysler’s restructuring, so that points to “evidence” that the Obama administration is deliberately punishing GOP contributors.

Nate Silver, who has a nasty habit of using pesky things like facts to respond to silly arguments, explained, “There is just one problem with this theory. Nobody has bothered to look up data for the control group: the list of dealerships which aren’t being closed. It turns out that all car dealers are, in fact, overwhelmingly more likely to donate to Republicans than to Democrats — not just those who are having their doors closed.”

There is no conspiracy. The Obama administration is not using Chrysler’s bankruptcy to punish individual Republican contributors. Conservative blogs jumped on this before thinking it through.”

Only one problem with that – it’s not so. I checked and of the 6 dealers closing in South Florida all their owners contribute to Republicans, and the 10 or so who are not contribute to Democrats. Which means – pay attention Beren – No dealers who contribute to Democrats are being closed. Additionally that means also that 60 percent of the Chrysler dealerships in South Florida are NOT Republican contributors and that further thus means that Chrysler dealerships – at least here in South Florida do NOT “overwhelmingly” donate to Republicans.

Which means that Nate Silver’s data is false.

So it looks that the theory is proved.

It’s unlikely we’ll get Democrats to hold hearings on this, but the pending litigation – with the discovery – could prove a worse than Watergate if found to be true.

As they say, hold on to your hats.