PatsFanInVa

Mitt Romney says "I'll take a lot of credit" for the auto industry rescue...

Romney: "I'll take a lot of credit" for auto industry revival - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

So much for Obama's horrible, horrible acknowledgement that he did something right on Bin Laden... in the absence of any bragging rights, Romney goes for the other guy's.

IcyPatriot

Are you and the Mrs political operatives ...

khayos

Autos = Michigan right?

Who's the chief executive of Michigan?

JackBauer

Yeah...Romney ain't winning this thing.

IcyPatriot

Hebeill

Mr Etch a Schetch strikes again, this man is a complete idiot when hes not closing down companies and laying off/firing the workers. I've never seen a politician lie as blatantly as this guy (and when he was gov of mass i didn't think he was a bad guy, he just didn't do anything for four years) But hes not going to out run this one, to much tape of him saying he wanted these companies to go banckrupt. Obama will chew him up and spit him out in a live debat when this and other flip flops are braught up. I can see him already nervously fidgetting on stage when asked about claiming he was responsible for the auto turn around when for years he said the auto industry should go bacnkrupt. After his first rehearsed answer, when he has to go free style he'll fall apart like we've seen him do in the Rep nomination debates

PatsFanInVa

"who is the chief executive of Michigan"

I'm pretty certain that the identity of the present governor of michigan, in some rightie's mind, bears on the question of whether Romney was the president of the United States in 2009.

You can just see the wheels turning... "I have an ironclad case based on some echo chamber talking point with nothing to do with the matter at hand."

Jennifer Granholm, governor of Michigan when the auto sector rescue went through, was certainly in favor of President Obama's quite successful actions... But the state government of Michigan, my dear wacky rightie friends, was not an important player in bringing Chrysler, GM, and a host of related parts suppliers back from the brink.



You guys really need to learn when you've been served.

PFnV

DarrylS

Another case of right wing revisionist history.. another lying politician, what else is new.. this will be the groundwork for a new campaign commercial etch a sketch strikes again...

__________________
"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

PatsFanInVa

A little tip to the dum-dums that don't know exactly what you're saying...

Go back and read Mitt's "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" op-ed.

Your next line is "he argued for exactly what they did! They must have done what Mitt said to do!"

This is stupid in one way, but has the added advantage of being an absolute lie in a another way.

Here's Mitt's bottom line, and the last line of that op-ed: There shouldn't be a "bailout check" for car companies.

Here's the question: What's a "bailout check?"

If it's government financing and deep involvement in the workings of the industry along with government loans, then yes Detroit got a "bailout check." They got loans, and then they got full-on government part-ownership of GM.

Now then: What the Mittster wanted to happen was a prepackaged bankruptcy, where the government did not provide financing. He stipulates as much, saying the government can guarantee loans post-bankruptcy.

So what happens in a bankruptcy when nobody will provide DIP financing? You sell things really really fast, and Chapter 11 is just a joke. There is no time to do your reorganization, as Mitt pretends to detail must be done. (Primarily his prescription is "workers have to take a real real big haircut and management should be replaced by non-car guys.")

This part indeed matched what the Administration actually did, but it's not a stroke of brilliant insight. It was pretty much the air that people breathed when talking about GM and Chrysler.

So the big Romney input was, "Pretend someone will loan the carmakers money for Chapter 11, and then make them do a Chapter 13 by another name."

In other words there's no debtor in possession, and what you really have is a liquidation. No rescue, just vulture capitalism as usual.

They'd have gone under, the partsmakers would have gone under, the whole shootin' match would have gone under. Those Eminem "Detroit's back" commercials would never have aired, and the Lions would be in LA by now.

Obama got it right. GM is back, Chrysler is back, and Ford survived too. Some partsmakers could not keep things going through the down years and went under but most hung on.

Today, GM is again the largest auto manufacturer in the world.

So, righties, here is your playbook going forward:

- Claim that Romney was right to take the credit

- Claim that the government part-ownership, loans, and other intervention pre-bankruptcy isn't a "bailout check" (to square the circle)

- Avoid talking about government intervention in the banking sector, so you're not a hypocrite because over there, loans are "bailout checks"

- If anybody makes the comparison complain that it's a deflection or somehow "off topic."

- But above all, try to talk about the many many points on which Romney mimicked what everybody else was saying -- unions take a haircut, management from outside, etc., and claim it was all Mitt's idea.

- Try very hard not to discuss the one substantive issue, how all of this was supposed to happen.

And for the love of God, don't give him credit for the one thing he does deserve it for, Romneycare.

By the way, free-marketeers, the Mittster has just punted on one last chance to drive the teabaggers to the polls by drawing distinctions in the Midwest.

"The auto sector rescue worked? That was all me!!! Oh wait you didn't like the auto sector rescue? My bad, that was my man O."

I wonder if the Righty turn-off factor is enough to coat-tail the House back to the Dems... hope so. Then they can finally get some good stuff done... oh that's right, we'll need a couple more Senate seats to get the safe 60.

Eh tough row to hoe but maybe the national pubbies won't feel like seeing Biden or Hillary elected in '16 & will play ball after the buttwhooping they're about to get.

PFnV

Drewski

I have no love for Romney, nor most of the current power brokers in the GOP (the Ds for that matter), but a quick commentary on the bolded above.

1. Do you really have that much faith in our system when one side controls the whole shabang?

I personally don't; I feel that our system works best when there are checks and balances. Rs ran the whole show for a period of time and fu(ked it up royally. Ds had the show for a couple of years and pretty much continued what their R predecessors did.

2. I realize you are left leaning poster, but are you one of those lefties who feel "the left has all the right answers all of the time"?

Not that there is anything wrong with that opinion and you are certainly entitled to to have it, but what evidence have you built that idea from?

3. I think all of the people running should be on high alert for a butt kicking (D and R alike).

There is a lot of hatred from the citizenry (not only here but around the world) toward their elected officials. Take a look at the elections in Europe. Mainstream parties are losing power to fringe fanatical parties because the mainstream parties are viewed as part of the problem (whether they are left leaning mainstream parties or right learning it has not mattered in Greece, France and to a lesser extent England and Germany).

James Carville had an "oped" on CNN yesterday and was basically making the same point - disdain in government is running high around the world - and while there is certainly targeted disdain at one side or the other from the opponents of said side....there is as much disdain at the whole governing body, and to assume a conclusion at this point (such as the Ds destroying the Rs) is folly.

This isn't to say that there wont be an ***** kicking come November for Romney or the Rs in general. But for everyone one person (whether here or in "real life") I have seen who target their hate to the "other guy" there are three people who would prefer to piss in all of their mouths.

What I would really love is for a nontraditional candidate ("third party") take a huge percentage of the vote (huge in historical proportions - ie more that a handful of percent). While that wouldn't necessarily change anything in terms of absolutes - Rs or Ds would still run everything, it may be just enough to wake these *******s up....