By Pat Garofalo/Think Progress
During an interview yesterday with WEWS-TV in Cleveland, Mitt Romney continued his contortionist’s actregarding the Obama administration’s rescue of the auto industry, saying that he deserves a lot of credit for the industry’s turnaround. “I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back,” he said:
My own view, by the way, was that the auto companies needed to go through bankruptcy before government help. And frankly, that’s finally what the president did. He finally took them through bankruptcy. That was the right course I argued for from the very beginning. It was the UAW and the president that delayed the idea of bankruptcy. I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet. So I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back.
Watch it:
Since penning a 2008 op-ed calling for letting Detroit go bankrupt, Romney has desperately tried to spin the eventual auto rescue as his idea, ignoring that he doubled down on his original op-ed by writing in February, “The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.”
Romney’s plan for a bankruptcy devoid of government financing has been blasted by auto industry insiders and reporters as “truly reckless, detached from reality, and dishonest.” “Romney’s take just doesn’t square with the facts as I lived them,” said Yahoo! Autos reporter Justin Hyde. The Economist wrote that Romney “conveniently ignores” history with his position on the rescue.
Even Republicans who have endorsed Romney disagree with his take on the auto rescue. “There was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI). But Romney keeps trying to spin the rescue as a success for himself, rather than a case in which he got the policy exactly wrong.
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