Sarah Binder notes that location played a big factor in how Republicans voted for the auto bailout bill in the House earlier this week. Republicans from rust belt states, especially Michigan, voted for the bill while more than 80% of their GOP colleagues voted against it.
 
32 Republican legislators voted for the bill, including all 8 Republican members of the House from Michigan. That includes Thad McCotter, who spoke out vociferously against the banking bailout passed a few weeks ago, calling it socialism and leading the fight against the program. It’s probably not a coincidence that McCotter represents the city of Livonia, which has a large population of auto workers.

And as Binder also notes, this does not bode well for the passage of the bailout in the Senate:

What lesson should the Big Three draw from the House vote as they seek roughly a dozen GOP votes to break Senator Richard Shelby’s promised Senate filibuster? Fill your tanks and buckle up for a bumpy ride. The geographic concentration of the domestic auto industry in the Rustbelt radically limits the industry’s voting power in the Senate. Nor has the spread of foreign automakers in search of lower labor costs into the South helped the Big Three’s cause, as southern senators—already ideologically predisposed to shun direct government support for the auto industry—seem unswayed by the potential for a heavily-unionized domestic industry in the Midwest to go bankrupt. And unfortunate for the Big Three, few of the remaining Senate GOP moderates yet appear to be on board for the bailout package.