Embracing this guy's auto bankruptcy plan doesn't seem like the path to victory in Michigan.
Michigan voters are about to hear quite a bit about Republican Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land's
position on the 2009 auto rescue. And it doesn't seem like a position that will go over very well in Michigan:
[Rep. Gary] Peters and other Democrats were expected to draw attention to statements Land made at a Republican National Convention event two years ago in which she backed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's anti-bailout position. Asked at a Washington Times-sponsored event about Romney and the bailout, she said "I'm with him on that" and noted that Ford survived without the rescue package.
Land said Ford's executive chairman, Bill Ford, "got a loan ... so people know that could have been done," adding that GM was known as "General Government" and "Government Motors."
Pointing out that the automaker that didn't need the rescue package and survived without it is not the strongest argument ever made. But then, there are no very strong arguments for Mitt Romney's plan of immediate bankruptcy. If there were, Romney would have made them, but instead, throughout the 2012 presidential campaign, his argument was
thoroughly discredited, with
even the judge who handled the Chrysler bankruptcy weighing in to say that Romney's plan would not have worked.
GM has now been profitable for 16 straight quarters, 48,500 American workers are getting $7,500 profit-sharing checks from the company, and the auto sector continues adding jobs, though it hasn't gotten back to its pre-crash levels. Having embraced Mitt Romney's disastrous plan after President Obama's plan had shown success does not seem like a recipe for a Senate candidate in Michigan to have success of her own. But that's where Terri Lynn Land stands today.