But you see most of the Republican senators that voted against it are in the south where there are non-union foreign automakers which may stand to gain from the demise of the American auto manufacturers, and the voting against big government platform plays well to their constituents, and with the unpopular Bush likely bailing them out anyway they won't have to deal with the repercussions of their ideological stubbornness.
So having voted against the bailout, but it being done anyway they can paint themselves as fighting the good fight without winning, and avoiding the political repercussions that a potential collapse of the American automakers would cause had they actually stopped a bailout.
I agree that not bailing them out is a bad idea, but there are a lot of people, particularly in the south, that are against it.
It's a chess game, you have to look several moves ahead.
You see that is where the Republicans are plundering trying to win the south they already own, by pissing off the rest of the country. Who they really need if they want to start winning back seats in congress. That is assuming if they ever want to be a viable minority again. Which it does seem the conservatives don't give a damn about their current predicament. Which keeps feeding their further decline. Also south is starting to really so it's true colors as the haters. Who blindly hate for the sake of hating, and the rest of America is not letting themselves be bullied by the haters anymore.
If the Republicans want the South's votes, they can have them say the Democrats and the rest of the nation.