In a June 2, 2009 Townhall blogpost, Phyllis Schlafly perpetuated a myth that is gaining traction in the conservative noise machine: that the Obama administration took a direct hand in GM and Chrysler car dealership closings and deliberately targeted dealerships that contributed to Republican candidates.

This accusation is baseless. The Obama administration had no hand in deciding what dealerships would close, as GM and Chrysler CEOs have made clear. In addition, statistical analysis shows that car dealerships are overwhelmingly owned by Republicans, and more car dealerships that remained open are owned by Republicans than Democrats.

However, now, like all good conspiracy theories, the proponents of this one have refused to let it die. One mathematical analysis showed no favoritism toward Democrats, and no targeting of Republicans -- but it did seem to indicate (if you're a little rusty on your statistics) a trend toward favoring Clinton donors.

So now the hypothesis has shifted, and to back it up, the people advancing the theory are pointing to one dealer group in particular. Owned by people like Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson, a major backer of Hillary Clinton in 2008, and Mack McLarty, who served as White House press secretary in Bill Clinton's administration, it didn't lose a single dealership.

Sure, that might seem at first like an indication of something nefarious. But if you seriously think the Obama team is risking everything to protect a guy who brought up their candidate's drug use on the trail during the Democratic primary, well, we have an American car company we'd like to sell you.

If anything, the percentage of Republican auto dealers on the list is smaller than their percentage among car dealers generally, or at least self-identified auto dealers who contributed to presidential candidates in the last election.

We find the Fox News study especially convincing because it compared a sample of dealerships set to close with a sample of dealerships that were allowed to remain open. That procedure follows the accepted scientific method of using a control group to determine whether a set of data in an experiment is significantly different from what one would find normally, or by chance. In this case, Fox News found the answer was a solid "no."

A preliminary study by FOXNews.com found that the data do not support the charges. Among the dealerships set to close, 12 percent of a random 50 selected for review donated to Republicans and 8 percent to Democrats. Of the dealerships remaining open, 14 percent of a random 50 selected donated to Republicans and 10 percent to Democrats. In both samples, the average size of donations was similar for both parties.

Chrysler said in the Reuters article that it made the decisions based on location, customer satisfaction and sales potential. The company also noted that almost half of the targeted dealerships sell other brands of cars and most rely on used vehicle sales for their business.

In fact, in several cases -- such as for the data on Republican donations -- the coefficient has the opposite sign of the one that the purveyors of the dealergate hypothesis were hoping for. Republican donors were incrementally less, rather than more likely likely to have their dealerships shuttered, according to Singer's analysis, although the pattern is nowhere in the ballpark of being "statistically significant" as most of us would define it.

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. Car dealerships need quite a bit of space and will tend to be located in suburban or rural areas. I can't think of too many other occupations that are more natural fits for the Republican Party. Unfortunately, while we are still a nation of drivers, we are not a nation of dealers.

Chrysler Seeks Further Consolidation Through Project Genesis 12:58 a.m. EDT, February 11, 2008

In a move to address a surplus of floundering metropolitan dealerships and duplicate badged products, Chrysler announced a program this week dubbed Project Genesis.

Previously the company worked through Project Alpha to consolidate its three brands in single locations. Project Genesis takes that concept to the next level, said Jim Press, co-president of Chrysler, in an interview with Automotive News. "Genesis incorporates the whole company getting on the same alignment with the same overall strategy," he said. "The dealer network component is a piece of an overall plan."

By reducing the number of unprofitable dealers operating in close proximity to one another, Chrysler hopes to push the advantage of marking its three brands under one roof "to get the full lineup of Chrysler Corp. everywhere" said Press.

Citing an intention to seek dealer feedback and describing Genesis as a forum, Press said there is no existing time table or set numerical goals on reducing either dealerships or trimming vehicles. Each metropolitan area will be visited by "business solution teams" to help Chrysler dealers evaluate their viability for remaining in business and "to help bring our owners financial capability to draw on new sources of equity, financing property, handling tax consequences, estate planning" and other issues, said Press.

After the launch of Project Alpha in 2004, Chrysler successfully reduced its number of dealerships from 4,000 to 3,600. The new plan will raise that number as well as create outlets for service-only operations as well as satellite dealerships.

Chrysler executives said Thursday the company is trying to preserve its best-performing dealers and eliminate ones with the weakest sales. More than half of the dealerships being eliminated sell less than 100 vehicles per year, they said, and account for 14 percent of U.S. sales.