In Washington, senior officials who worked with former President Bush are claiming that new president Barack Obama is as much to blame as anyone else for GM's collapse, due to his support of the Bush government's decision to bail out GM in January. Meanwhile, advocates of Obama claim that the bailout money was given to Detroit simply to prevent the two companies going under while George Bush was in power - in other words, they were given enough money to survive until the new president was sworn in.
Obama's team is claiming that by not putting conditions on the bailout money, the move was little more than a passing of the buck onto the next President. A similar sentiment was expressed by former vice president Dick Cheney, who revealed that the Bush administration didn’t want to be the one to pull the plug on GM.
Whoever was responsible, however, wasn't of much concern to conservatives angry about the government's decision to meddle in the affairs of private companies, calling the new GM a failure of free enterprise. Controversial conservative personality Rush Limbaugh claimed that America doesn't want to support an "Obama company". However, The Detroit News reports that polls are showing 83% of Americans are not planning on boycotting GM in the future.
While Limbaugh never explicitly called for a boycott of GM, his sentiments toward the company were not exactly a resounding appreciation for its survival. A spokesman from the Democratic party expressed surprise that the Republican party was "silently going along" with Limbaugh, especially considering "how many hard working Americans rely on GM for a living."