http://detnews.com/...
What a hypocritical jackass:
"It breaks my heart to see the city the way I see it now," Romney said at a rally in Troy. "I remember Detroit as the pride of the nation.
"… I see what's happened and it just tears at my heart because I know what this city can be and was."
It "tears at his heart."
This is the guy who would have dumped hundreds of thousands of auto workers, their families, and their supporting industries and businesses into the Michigan streets, and he has the audacity and arrogance to shed crocodile tears for Detroit. The same clueless lack of empathy he displayed when he tied his hapless dog to the top of the car is on full display here, as is the pathological flip-flopping and outright lying. In other words, Nixon with a blow dryer.
Mark Brewer, Chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, put it bluntly after Wednesday's debate:
"It's ironic that the latest GOP debate was held in the shadow of Chrysler's World Headquarters, one of the largest office complexes in the state, when every one of the candidates on stage would have let the domestic auto industry disappear," said state Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer.
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"In the domestic auto industry's darkest hour, Romney would have let Chrysler and General Motors be liquidated -- taking 1.4 million jobs with them.
The intervention of the federal government not only rescued the auto industry from collapse, it averted an economic catastrophe for the country as a whole. Steven Rattner was the primary architect of the bailout, appointed by Obama in 2009 to shepherd the task force that handled the restructuring process:
"It would have been an economic calamity. You would have had a couple million people out of work. We just felt it was an unacceptable risk to take," said Rattner.
Without government intervention, GM and Chrysler would have shut down and liquidated, said Rattner. This would have devastated a web of workers, suppliers, and communities, especially in the Midwest.
Of course, these facts are inconvenient, as is the fact that the bailout is now nearly universally regarded as a complete success. According to Rattner, in addition to saving over a million jobs, the taxpayers could recoup 85% of the 82 Billion dollars spent on the bailout in rejuvenated equity of Chrysler and "New" General Motors.
But facts matter little to a serial liar. Rather than own up to his grievous error in judgment, Romney now characterizes the federal bailout of the auto industry as something he would have approved of, if only the procedure had been reversed:
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"What President Obama and President Bush did was to write a check first — billions and billions of dollars was written to bail out the industry,” Mr. Romney said. “And then they realized that that was not the answer. I was, frankly, right. They had to go through managed bankruptcy. They finally went through bankruptcy. That was what was necessary in order to get rid of the excess costs. And for them to be able to get on their feet.”
Mr. Romney continued: “I said, ‘Don’t write checks. They need to go through bankruptcy.’ And that’s finally what happened. And by the way, the fact they went through bankruptcy and President Obama had them go through bankruptcy and get restructured is exactly what I said had to happen in that Op-Ed. And the support that came afterwards was appropriate.”
This is a flat out lie, and Romney knows it. The money was provided conditioned upon radical restructuring of the companies, termination of bad management, cutting dealerships, and otherwise streamlining operations. The money kept people employed and their families surviving during the time it took to do that that, resulting in a remarkably swift bankruptcy and as little economic pain as possible. The entire point of providing funds at the outset was to protect the auto industry and its supporting economy from a complete collapse and to provide a future livelihood for the people who worked in the industry, rather than have it disappear to be replaced by some corporate figments of Mitt Romney's imagination.
The Obama campaign isn't buying Romney's backpedalling:
If Mitt Romney was president, there would not be an American auto industry,” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the president’s re-election campaign, in an e-mail. “Industry experts have been clear: Our auto companies would have faced liquidation if Mitt Romney had his way and more than 1 million Americans would have lost their jobs..
While it is obvious Romney is constitutionally incapable of telling the truth, lesser remarked is what that signifies in terms of his emotional and psychological make-up. Simply calling him a "flip-flopper" obscures this point. Most politicians will alter their positions to suit the political moment. But the "weathervane" quality of Romney approaches the borders of pathology.
When I ask locals about their impressions of Mitt, I get a recurring response: Nixonian. “The overriding passion of his life seems to be to become president,” a conservative economics professor tells me. “I can’t think of a single issue over which Romney would risk reelection in order to stick to a principle.”
Someone who considers "telling the truth" as merely one of many available options under the circumstances is by definition not going to possess or offer much in terms of compassion or basic human decency. Romney's entire career appears to be a cynical exercise of meeting the needs of the political moment, rather than any sense of civic responsibility. His refusal to acknowledge the success of the auto industry bailout or the human cost had his failed prescription been followed is just another example of the disturbing inner hollowness of the man.