Lee Spieckerman, CEO of Spieckerman Media: [some Fox commentators] seem to have kind of a fetish for demonizing the Volt

Well, well. The network that prides itself on its “fair and balanced” coverage has aired a segment in which a prominent conservative makes a case for the Chevy Volt, and joins Bob Lutz in rebutting some of the misleading and downright false statements that right-wing pundits (including some on Fox News) have been making about the car.

Lee Spieckerman, CEO of Spieckerman Media, made his comments on a recent edition of Fox & Friends: “I’m a Texan, I love oil, I’m a drill baby drill guy and…I love Fox News. But like a lot of my fellow conservatives, [some Fox commentators] seem to have kind of a fetish for demonizing the Volt and they’re perpetuating this myth that the Volt was some kind of Obama Administration green energy fantasy that was forced on GM during the bailout. It had been in development two years before Obama was elected…and the tax break for buying the Volt was implemented by the Bush administration. That was not something that occurred under the Obama administration. So, unfortunately, there have been a lot of myths perpetuated.”

Spieckerman goes on to make a conservative case for the Volt on national security grounds. “I don’t understand what is so conservative about wanting to send $35 billion a year to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela for his oil or to send $70 billion to Middle Eastern OPEC countries. We’re propping up the world oil price, which is giving Iran the resources it needs to develop nuclear weapons, indirectly it’s funding Hezbollah and Hamas and terrorists that are trying to kill Americans.”

Spieckerman calls the Volt “the iPhone of the American automobile industry,” and addresses the issue of the Volt’s high price compared to its sister the Cruze. “Over five years you’ll save a ton of fuel. There’s a price differential but at the end of the day we really only need to get the Volt about 20% cheaper to make it comparable to the Chevy Cruze…Look at flat screen TVs, they’ve come down 50% in five years, computers have gone down 90%.”

Image: Chevrolet