{"id":2242,"date":"2004-08-02T12:59:35","date_gmt":"2004-08-02T17:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2242.html"},"modified":"2004-08-02T12:59:35","modified_gmt":"2004-08-02T17:59:35","slug":"what-is-it-with-bush-and-timken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/what-is-it-with-bush-and-timken\/","title":{"rendered":"What is it with Bush and Timken?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bush was in Ohio (20 electoral votes) again over the weekend, emphasizing his new &#8220;turn the corner&#8221; campaign theme that he seems so excited about. The interesting thing about the appearance to me &#8212; aside from the fact that Bush&#8217;s rhetoric sounds a lot <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-dems1aug01,1,169359.story?coll=la-headlines-nation\">like Herbert Hoover&#8217;s<\/a> 70 years ago &#8212; was yet another campaign appearance for Bush at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A30872-2004Jul31.html\">a Timken Co. plant<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I realize that Timken&#8217;s CEO is a major Bush fundraiser and that the Timken family has given <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opensecrets.org\/indivs\/search.asp?Order=A&#038;txtName=TIMKEN&#038;txtState=OH&#038;txtZip=&#038;txtEmploy=&#038;txtCand=&#038;txt2004=Y&#038;txt2002=Y&#038;txt2000=Y&#038;txt1998=&#038;txt1996=&#038;txt1994=&#038;txt1992=&#038;txt1990=&#038;txtSoft=N\">more than $1 million<\/a> in the past three elections to the Republican cause. But you&#8217;d think, after a while, Bush would be able to find a different company to visit. Indeed, after what&#8217;s happened in the recent past, you&#8217;d think Timken would stop inviting Bush back.<\/p>\n<p>* In April 2003, Bush was trying to rally support for his third major tax cut scheme when he visited a Timken plant and said, &#8220;The greatest strength of the American economy is found right here, right in this room.&#8221; A few months later, company announced that it was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A49361-2003Sep22.html\">cutting 900 jobs<\/a> and lowering its earnings forecasts.<\/p>\n<p>* Just a year after Bush held out Timken as a model for American &#8220;jobs and growth,&#8221; the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cleveland.com\/search\/index.ssf?\/base\/cuyahoga\/1084613688244220.xml?ncounty_cuyahoga\">company announced<\/a> a plan to close three plants and eliminate 1,300 jobs.<\/p>\n<p>And yet Bush returned to Timken yet again on Friday, this time hearing some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/la-na-bush1aug01,1,6227715.story\">pretty serious anxiety<\/a> from the company&#8217;s workers.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[Bush said] that the economy &#8220;lags in places like eastern Ohio,&#8221; and then referred to his conversation with the Timken workers, who, he said, &#8220;told me they are nervous about their future.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>After Bush&#8217;s abysmal record thus far, can anyone blame them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bush was in Ohio (20 electoral votes) again over the weekend, emphasizing his new &#8220;turn the corner&#8221; campaign theme that he seems so excited about. The interesting thing about the appearance to me &#8212; aside from the fact that Bush&#8217;s rhetoric sounds a lot like Herbert Hoover&#8217;s 70 years ago &#8212; was yet another campaign [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}