People who accuse the Governor of not caring about the automobile industry are just using that criticism to hide their own partisan politics. Naïve citizens, who believe those accusations, fail to realize that sometimes a politician may seem not to care about one particular interest group, when in fact he is trying to enact public policy that benefits many different people and many different interests.
Which one of the following, if true, provides the strongest support for what the author says in the first sentence of the passage?
A. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between not caring about one specific group's interests, and actually caring about broader concerns and general public interest.
(A) is incorrect because it makes an excuse for the people the author accuses of dishonesty in the first sentence, and the ones he calls "naïve" in the second sentence. The first sentence accuses the Governor's critics of being dishonest about their criticism, implying that they are motivated by "partisan politics" and not by any genuine concern about the Governor's treatment of the auto industry. The question asks for support for this claim. If it's hard to tell whether the Governor actually doesn't care about one particular interest or is trying to serve broader interests, that would undercut the argument that his critics are being dishonest. What the second sentence does is suggest that only an ignorant fool would believe that these critics are sincere, which makes the first sentence's meaning clear.
B. The Governor's harshest critics are members of automobile workers' unions, and politicians with strong ties to the automotive industry.
(B) is correct. Again, the first sentence accuses the Governor's critics of being dishonest and motivated by partisan politics. If those critics are complaining that the Governor doesn't care about the auto industry, but they themselves are connected to that industry, then the author is probably right that their motives are selfish and disingenuous.
C. Many people who think the Governor doesn't care about the automobile industry voted for him in the last election.
(C) is incorrect because it does not support the argument that the Governor's critics are being dishonest. It is neither dishonest nor hypocritical to vote for a politician and then criticize his performance in office. To the extent that the critics' votes in the last election might influence their present criticism of the Governor, it would be more likely that their criticism is dishonest if they did NOT vote for him than if they did.
D. The Governor is not a politician who talks about the difference between partisan politics and civic responsibility.
(D) is incorrect because whether the Governor himself "talks about" this distinction is irrelevant to the honesty of his critics. At issue is WHY those critics are claiming that the Governor does not care about the auto industry; whether they really believe that or not. This statement does not answer that question either way.
E. Sometimes a politician thinks he's trying to help the whole community, when, in reality, he just doesn't care about the concerns of one particular group.
(E) is incorrect because it is also not relevant to whether or not the Governor's critics are being honest about their criticism. This sounds like something the critics would say, but the question does not ask us to support the critics; it asks us to support the author. This might be the correct answer if we were being asked for a rebuttal.
