It gets more and more parched about what Romney is even saying his position was now. He went from trying to bash the President on the auto bailout to saying that it was his plan that the President listened to. He further muddies the water by adding that his plan was the same as the President's but that unlike the President's plan, his would have cost the taxpayers nothing.
Romney at the time wrote the infamous piece where he declared Let Ford Go Bankrupt. He made this stark prediction:
"IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html
Now he tries to revise history:
"Well, there's a nice chance in debates to talk about truth and fiction. I don't think many people understand that the president took the car companies into bankruptcy. They went into bankruptcy, exactly as I proposed. So the difference between us is that I would have done it earlier than the president did, and saved the American taxpayers about $20 billion."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/07/1128948/-Romney-once-again-claims-credit-for-saving-auto-industry-says-Obama-did-exactly-as-I-proposed
You like that gloss about "earlier than the President did." Right-Romney wrote this in November, 2008 and the President wasn't in office in January the next year so this criticism of being too slow is on the level of Paul Ryan blaming the President for the closing of that Janesviille plant.
Romney has now come to claim that he sought a "structured bankruptcy" but what this means is that the government wouldn't have helped GM in bankruptcy. As there were no interested private investors at the time this would have meant the end of the auto industry.
It's interesting reflecting on what Romney saw as the cardinal problem of GM at the time-greedy labor:
"their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers."
This is the Republican answer of all problems-cut the pay of workers, cut their pensions while raising the profit of the kind of folks that run Bain capital.
"Romney wanted to let the companies go through bankruptcy on their own, but if that had happened, the entire industry would have been devastated. We were in the middle of a financial crisis, and there simply wasn't any private financing to be had. In order to protect the companies from simply collapsing, the question was whether the government would step in, as it had with Wall Street, to keep a bad situation from getting worse."
This is the difference between Romney's position and President's Obama's: Romney's plan would have spelt the end of the auto industry and the loss of millions of jobs. That's no small difference. He will try to obscure this but as there was no private financing he wouldn't have "done the same only better" he would have simply ended the auto industry.
What Romney really suggested was kind of like the Republicans hostage taking during the debt ceiling fiasco.
"Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."
He thought that the kinds of pay cuts for labor that are the bread and butter of him and his friends over at Bain-where cuts in worker pay mean higher bonuses for Bain execs-could be forced by withholding a government bailout.
However, this was not a restructuring for the industry but rather its euthanasia.
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