Approval of an auto industry loan package will not save the domestic automakers, but it will give the Detroit Three a chance to save themselves.

The emergency loans are desperately needed to keep the automakers alive long enough for their turnaround plans to take hold. Without the assistance, one or more of these companies could die.

No one can know the impact a failure of a major automaker will have on the national economy. But at the least it would deepen and darken an already frightening recession.

The House understood that, as evidenced by its approval vote Wednesday night. But the Senate is a tougher sell. Republican senators primarily from states that host foreign auto manufacturers have shown little sympathy for Detroit's plight, and have assumed they know more about building cars than Chrysler LLC, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp.

That attitude is expressed by Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. Corker wants even more conditions and a greater federal role built into the bailout legislation. He says Detroit should rely on the federal government's "big stick" to force further concessions and cost-cutting.

Nobody needs Congress running car companies.

Like most of Washington, Corker is ill-informed of the forces roiling the domestic auto industry. But the reality is that changing the minds of Detroit's critics is an impossible task.

So we appeal to Senate Republicans to act not in support of the domestic automakers, but in the interest of the national economy and national security — we still need an Arsenal of Democracy.

The automakers are moving with purpose to fix what ails them. If successful, they will change the fate of the workers and businesses that depend on them throughout the economy and across the nation — including in Corker's Tennessee.

But if the Senate lets them die, they will take with them 4.5 million jobs and all hope for a quick economic recovery.

We urge the Senate, please give Detroit a chance to make things right.

REPRINTED FROM THE DETROIT NEWS.