Democrat policies destroyed Elkhart RV business

Allison Linn:

In the same way that people might speculate about a couple that could be heading for divorce, business leaders in Elkhart, Ind., sometimes talked about what could happen if the recreational vehicle industry took a serious turn for the worse.

They'd seen it happen before in the early 1970s with the energy crisis and in other recessions since. But this was back a few years ago, when business was booming, and such talk seemed more theoretical than practical, as you might discuss the need to get a new roof, eventually.

(Related: More in the Elkhart Project blog on “Getting savvy about job hunting.”)

"Yeah, there may be a desire to implement change, or diversify," said Brian Gildea, economic development director for the city of Elkhart. "But when it's not broken, the impetus to change is not there."

Now the so-called "RV Capital of the World" is seeing a scenario that even the most pessimistic didn't think would come to pass.

A season of high gas prices, a deep and lasting recession, a drop in home and investment values and a severe shortage of credit have conspired to decimate the RV industry, which officials say once accounted for as many as one in four jobs here.

The unemployment rate in Elkhart County hit 18.8 percent as of March, up from just 5.8 percent a year earlier. Many local companies, including RV makers and their vast network of small, independent suppliers, have either cut back or gone out of business entirely, leaving the community with millions of square feet worth of vacant manufacturing buildings and thousands of unemployed workers.

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There is much more.

Democrats are primarily responsible for the problems that drove the RV industry down. Their strangulation of domestic energy production drove up prices to a point that people could not afford to take an RV around the block, much less on a long trip. Of course, this is what Democrats wanted. They have always wanted to stop people from using vehicles to consumed a lot of fuel. Now they act like the problems that beset Elkhart just happened.

Democrats were also responsible for the credit crunch. Their policy of making lenders give mortgages to people that could not afford them was directly responsible for the credit crunch taht hit Wall Street. Now they act like their victims in Elkhart are just victims of a bad economy.