Mitt Romney was born in Michigan. His father ran American Motors. He should be breezing his way through the Michigan primary.
Polling released today, however, shows Rick Santorum with a six-point lead over Romney in Mitt’s home state. The Boston Globe blamed Romney’s problems on his 2008 op-ed piece, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”:
Perhaps Romney’s biggest Achilles heel in Michigan, home of the auto industry, is an op-ed he wrote in the New York Times in 2008 entitled ‘Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.’ ‘If General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye,’ Romney wrote.
Romney argued that the automakers will not make necessary changes to their businesses – such as reducing workers’ pay and benefits and recruiting new management – if they are bailed out. Rather, he said, they should go through a managed bankruptcy.
A careful and calculating person like Romney would want to avoid discussing whether Detroit should have gone bankrupt in 2009 if that issue is indeed his “Achilles heel in Michigan.”
Guess again.
A Romney-penned op-ed piece appeared in the Detroit News today under the title “U.S. autos bailout ‘was crony capitalism on a grand scale.’” In the piece, Romney says the restructuring of the auto industry — the “bailout” — was not so great:
This was crony capitalism on a grand scale. 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.
Really? ThinkProgress begs to differ:
Meanwhile, [Romney] continues to ignore the success of the rescue plan he criticizes. Chrysler posted its first profit more than a decade in last year and expects those profits to continue growing in 2012. It has added 9,400 jobs since its rescue and plans to add 1,600 more at a plant in Illinois this year, and the success of Chrysler and General Motors has helped American automakers control more than half of the industry’s market share. The industry has hired enough workers to make up for all those laid off during the recession, and American and foreign automakers plan to add 167,000 jobs at American plants this year.
Those are lofty numbers. We obviously did not “kiss” the auto industry goodbye, as Romney predicted would happen if the bailout passed.
Instead of congratulating the industry for its success, Romney offers sour grapes to Michigan and a narrative that is contrary to what Americans know is true about the state of the auto industry. Its like Karl Rove saying that he was “offended” by Clint Eastwood’s Chrysler ad that played during halftime at the Super Bowl.
Attacking success because it happened on your opponent’s watch is not a successful political strategy in America. Mitt Romney is acting like a person that does not think he is going to win.
