Top Mitt Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom claimed that President Obama’s auto bailout was the GOP presidential hopeful’s idea. Fehrnstrom said Obama followed Romney’s course to help the auto industry during an appearance at a Saturday roundtable discussion hosted by the The Washington Post.
“His position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed,” Fehrnstrom said. “He said, ‘If you want to save the auto industry, just don’t write them a check. That will seal their doom. What they need to do is go through a managed bankruptcy process.'”
Another flat-out lie from Mr. Etch-A-Sketch. That isn’t what Romney said. Romney, scrambling for an answer in Michigan on why he opposed the auto bailout, came up with his latest position, which was the private investors should have bailed out the auto companies. The reason I know this is because it just happened.
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney renewed his opposition to the Obama administration’s bailout of General Motors and Chrysler today in several Michigan newspapers, contending President Obama’s rescuemade the companies worse. I wish I could leave politics to the professionals, but Romney’s take just doesn’t square with the facts as I lived them.
“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.”The crux of Romney’s argument: If Obama had not acted, private companies would have stepped in and run a “managed bankruptcy.” What this ignores is that in the fall of 2008, before Obama was even sworn in, no one on Wall Street or anywhere else was willing to lend GM and Chrysler a penny — let alone the $81 billion they and their financial arms eventually needed.
Even after Obama took office, GM and Chrysler searched frantically for paths to avoid bankruptcy, including a possible merger. Chrysler held a one-week garage sale of its assets in February 2009, inviting anyone with enough money to bid for parts of the company. No one bit.
“Ultimately, that is what happened. The course I recommended was eventually followed. GM entered managed bankruptcy in June 2009 and exited it a month later in July.
The Chrysler timeline was similarly swift. But something else happened along the way that was truly egregious. Before the companies were allowed to enter and exit bankruptcy, the U.S. government swept in with an $85 billion sweetheart deal disguised as a rescue plan.”
No entity blocked GM and Chrysler’s path to the bankruptcy court except their own executives. Had the government not intervened as Romney suggests, GM and Chrysler likely would have been liquidated by their Wall Street bondholders, some of whom held out for a few more pennies on the dollar at the risk of the entire bankruptcy case. One auto industry think tank estimated doing so would have led to 1.3 million job losses and threatened Ford, Toyota and other automakers.
“Chrysler’s ‘secured creditors,’ who in the normal course of affairs should have been first in line for compensation, were given short shrift, while at the same time, the UAWs’ union-boss-controlled trust fund received a 55 percent stake in the firm.”
Chrysler’s secured creditors were a group of Wall Street banks — including J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs — and investment firms, some of whom had bought the company’s secured bonds in the months ahead of bankruptcy hoping to cash in. They could have rejected the government’s offer of 28 cents on the dollar in cash for their $6.7 billion in bonds and paid to liquidate Chrysler themselves, but decided that not only would they come out even further behind, they’d also be blamed for destroying an American automaker. (GM’s secured creditors − also mostly Wall Street banks — were paid in full, and endorsed the Obama bankruptcy plan.)
As for the “union-boss-controlled trust fund,” that’s what’s known as a VEBA trust that now pays the health care of 426,409 retirees from GM, Ford and Chrysler — and in return, owns all future health-care obligations from the companies for those retirees. With this, Romney appears to argue that before hundreds of thousands of UAW retirees got health care, Wall Street should have been made whole.
The auto industry is important to the economic survival of the rural, conservative county where I live. Romney’s voters live here. Conservatives need to rack up huge margins in rural counties in Ohio to trump the huge Democratic margins in the counties where most of the people in Ohio live, and the shape-shifting “Mitt Romney” (whoever that might be) knows that.
We went to 17% unemployment waiting for the federal rescue to kick in and I was talking to the childrens librarian at the public library about her idea to use Friends of the Library funds to offer bagged lunches to kids at the library because she knew they wouldn’t get the federally-subsidized school lunch they were all signing up for when school let out that summer. Unemployment here is now at 8%. I believe that during this period Mr. Romney was busy writing self-aggrandizing op-eds in the New York Times and lining up his Wall Street donors. Romney went with the DC-generated conventional wisdom on the auto bailout rather than siding with his own voters in states he needs to win because he’s absolutely allergic to risk, and that looked like the safe bet. That’s what happened.
Villago Delenda Est
Mitt Romney is an irredeemable cowardly shitstain.
That is all.
schrodinger's cat
Does Romney have a navel, he seems so much like a robot to me. It seems irresponsible not to speculate. Whoever programmed him, forgot the empathy chip, unfortunately.
jon
GM should have asked mom and dad for a loan.
Strangely, that’s kinda what happened.
amk
His blatant lying is stunning. How could the fucking press ignore such a significant character flaw in a man running to be the world’s leader ? How the other leaders would trust this scumbag, if god forbid, does get elected ?
Mino
If rural, conservative folks were saved by Obama’s bailout, how did you guys get Kasich? What was wrong with Strickland?
General Stuck
The compulsive lying has really spun out of control lately, not only from GOP candidates, but most of their pundits as well. They lie even when they don’t need to, and do it with ease because they know they will get away with it.
The press needs to get plenty of blame, but this would not be happening if circa 45% of the voting public cared, even when they do hear the truth.
This is the really bad news. And an indication of how tribal this country is and is getting more so. The somewhat good news is, you can’t win elections in a two man race with 45% of the vote.
redshirt
There’s some logic to Rmoney’s incessant lying. If you’re not called on it, and it helps you, why not keep doing it?
Will he get called on it? If so, only in the vaguest, “both sides do it” manner.
So the lies will continue.
amk
@Mino: muslin, blackety black, death panels. Half the american voters are really,really stupid.
Mortimer
‘Managed bankruptcy’ is what companies like Bain do. Line workers and middle managers would have gotten let go or hammered, and Romney’s oh-so-smart financial management types would have made yet another bundle of cash by ‘rescuing’ a company. The rescue would have left Michigan a smoking crater, but the fat cats would have done well while tut-tutting about how those idiot auto workers should know that they’re in a dying industry.
rikyrah
LET DETROIT GO BANKRUPT.
English is not a second language for me.
I totally understand it.
LET DETROIT GO BANKRUPT.
Mino
Republican are moving the Overton window, defining deviancy down, recalibrating the definition of…. lie.
Dan
@Mino:
The auto industry was still in the process of recovery in 2010, and Ohio’s just like the rest of the country – midterm elections have an older and whiter electorate.
Mino
@Mortimer: Too many people would have been watching to allow them to steal all the pension funds. Not a good deal.
kay
@redshirt:
I know I sound like a broken record, but I don’t think we should conflate local reporting with national political reporters.
Romney was savaged on this both in MI and in NW OH when he rolled it out a couple of months ago.
Elections are national, but they’re also 50 state races. Fold that in, because the Bush campaign were good at both sides of that reality.
Cantrip
What I want to know is: where’s the constant series of serial liar articles that followed Al Gore around in 2000? Oh, silly me, I forgot that our press are in general a pack of syphylitic running dog lickspittles. Sometimes the old insults.are the most accurate.
Cantrip
What I want to know is: where’s the constant series of serial liar articles that followed Al Gore around in 2000? Oh, silly me, I forgot that our press are in general a pack of syphylitic running dog lickspittles. Sometimes the old insults.are the most accurate.
Cantrip
Sorry for the double post.
Kane
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/16/10425534-romneys-poorly-timed-criticism-of-the-auto-rescue?lite
Romney bet against the American auto workers, and lost. No amount of spin is going to make people forget that.
Amir Khalid
Let’s consider Mitt.
Pro: A handsome man of presidential bearing.
Con: A man of inconstant principles, no empathy, no sense of humor, no charisma, uneasy in his own skin, a dull orator, an easily-caught but unrepentant liar.
Would he make a good president? Gee, I dunno …
Sorry to go off-topic, but I know the Bersih 3.0 rally in my town, Kuala Lumpur, has been of interest to some Juicers.
An Australian Senator monitoring the rally and its media coverage is astounded by the official-media bias. (Malaysia Kini is an independent online newspaper.)
here is the front-page lead story from the New Straits Times (corporate media; owned by a business proxy of UMNO, PM Najib Abdul Razak’s party).
General Stuck
@kay:
I think this remains true, and may be the only thing holding it all together.
RossInDetroit
He’s trying to finesse the details and he’ll fail. The general voting public doesn’t want to compare line by line what Obama did against what Romney says (this time) he’d have done.
They understand “let Detroit fail” and they understand that that disaster was avoided. All the spin in the world isn’t going to change that, even if Romney was right.
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
Whoops, wrong NST story; this is their front-page lead for April 29.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
Amir, my knowledge of Malay internal politics is similar to Mitt Rmoney’s foreign policy experience, although I do know that Czechoslovakia ceased to exist in the 90’s. That aside, my perception is that the ruling party is playing the Saudi game: appease the reactionary clerics in order to keep them on the side of the rulers against the reform types. Is that an accurate perception, from your on the spot vantage point?
Redshift
@rikyrah: Perhaps my favorite part of this one is that normal people assume “go bankrupt” means “go out of business,” and Romney’s people are reduced to talking in bankerese about bankruptcy to try to make their lie stick. When you’re explaining, you’re losing. Even if it were true, it would do them no good.
Mino
@Amir Khalid: When do protesters start hitting themselves upside the head with stolen police batons?
gaz
He can’t even fucking lie properly. Romney can’t win.
General Stuck
“What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?” Obama asked. “A pit bull is delicious.”
Duck and cover. Sarah is busy typing her butthurt response that Obama doesn’t want to eat her.
Redshift
@Kane: Shorter Romney: I said Obama’s plan would destroy the auto industry, and I totally would have done the same thing!
Mino
@General Stuck: He really had an evil grin when he delivered that line and Mrs. O. looked like she couldn’t believe he used the joke.
Villago Delenda Est
@General Stuck:
I do love that man, I don’t like a number of his policy choices, but that joke is priceless.
gaz
Obama is smooth. He got right out in front of that stupid smear.
The butthurt shall be legion.
amk
And still no tax returns. Fucking msm.
General Stuck
@Mino:
I think it was a walk on a slippery rock.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Mino: Independent vote bleed off to a 3d candidate. 49% Fox News personality, 47% Strickalnd
Davis X. Machina
@kay: Romney’s GM take –whichever one it is today — will get some traction, not a lot, but some, out in the exurbs. Where the non-college-educated white males live
In states where automotive isn’t a big factor in the local economy, the GOP backbone isn’t bond traders, it’s all those one-truck contractors who used to do houses and kitchens and such, and who are now kiting checks for gas down at the convenience store. (They post them on the wall here at this point, name and shame.)
They internalized all that small-business-entrepreneur-the-priest-of-our-state religion rah-rah, and its virulent unionphobia. Size frightens them — big firms are their right-here, day-to-day enemies, and Washington is far away.
Those guys want to know where’s their bailout? They were minting it during the housing boom.
There’s a strong Poujadiste strain to the GOP’s business wing, and it needs/wants stroking.
It’s early in the campaign still. If you’re stroking your base in October, it’s not a good sign.
Brachiator
This is sounding like the official GOP response to how Obama got bin Laden. Rachel Maddow recently ran the clip of those two foreign policy experts, the Cheney daughter and John Bolton, flatly declaring that Obama succeeded because he meekly did what the military told him to do, and also executed the plans laid out by the Bush Administration.
This is, of course, all nonsense. But it will be sucked up by the 27 percenters. It’s comical how Mittens is positioning himself to be pre-presidential. So, Obama was listening to Romney because he knows about business and always was meant to be president, while Obama is an incompetent whose only successes are do to doing what Real White American Republicans tell him to do.
Mino
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I think this Citizens Elect scam is designed to do the same in close states. When are the Democrats gonna bring that subject up?
Brachiator
BTW, the Bolton clip was on the Chris Matthews Show, not Maddow (could not go back and edit my earlier post)
Gian
“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.”
— George Orwell
Since the TV idiot box is full of either right winfers, or false equiv hand wringers… as are the majority of the papers, I can see where Mitt is going with this, he’s always been a supporter of detroit. and we were always at war with Iran
kay
@Davis X. Machina:
I think you’re right, but Obama really doesn’t have to sell the idea that the auto industry throws off revenue to small business here.
People know it. When the bonus checks come out all local newspapers do a regular piece on small business benefits because hourly workers spend their money.
Part of the Obama talking points on the auto rescue is the ripple effect of one auto industry job to the local community, but everyone here already knows that. That’s what Romney is up
against with this bullshit. Accepted truth.
During the worst of it, I heard panic from the usually bullet-proof health industry workers because they know that manufacturing workers here have health insurance. They would have gone under too.
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
First of all: are you referring to Malaysian politics, or to politics within the Malay ethnic community? Because the Bersih movement and demonstrations are about the former, not the latter. (On a side note, I’ve met a number of Americans who think that the adjective of Malaysia is “Malay”. Wrong: the adjective is “Malaysian”.)
Short answer: No. Gabungan Pilihanraya Bersih dan Adil (Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections), or Bersih is a nonpartisan and nonsectarian group that seeks electoral reforms.
The protests are nominally about electoral reform, but have also attracted people opposed to Barisan Nasional’s entrenched and not exactly transparent rule. The Barisan Nasional coalition is successor to the original three-party Alliance, which has ruled Malaya since independence in 1957, and continues to hold the Federal government in Malaysia. It will not surprise you that Barisan has a long history of (ab)using the levers of power (and before the Internet age, all-but-exclusive access to the media) to stifle dissent, enrich cronies and retain power. Najib did announce a few liberalization measures a few months ago, including more lenient licensing rules for newspapers and the end of detentions without trial (introduced by the British back during the 1948-1960 Emergency) but these are held to be insufficient in themselves, and an act of fishing for votes in the upcoming general election.
The Bersih 1.0 rally in late 2007 is widely held to have been a catalyst for the Pakatan Rakyat coalition led by Anwar Ibrahim, and for Barisan’s poor performance in the 2008 general election a few months later: loss of its 2/3 majority in the Federal Parliament, and of several state governments to Pakatan. The next GE is expected sometime this year, once again in the aftermath of a Bersih rally, and could see further losses for Barisan.
So Najib and Barisan see Bersih as being not-so-secretly in cahoots with Pakatan, and a real threat to Barisan’s hold on Federal power. What we’re seeing now is not a tactical alliance with Muslim clerics (who would mostly support the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party anyway, and PAS is a Pakatan member). It’s basically strong-arm tactics from the old Barisan playbook. But Barisan’s fear, and Najib’s of course, is that the old-time strong-arm tactics don’t work so well anymore; that after almost 60 years, an increasingly credible opposition has finally found an effective counter.
Brachiator
@amk:
Except for Maddow and a few others, the press will not simply call Romney a liar. It would not be polite and, worse, it might make it harder for them to get access to the talking heads and quote whores who are mentioned in news articles and who regularly appear on the talkin head shows.
So, at best, Romney is consistently described as a flip flopper, rather than a craven liar, and a man who consistently disavows his own past accomplishments.
There are probably a number of world leaders who are taking notes about Romney’s super smooth style of lying.
xian
@RossInDetroit: True. We complain about low-information voters and lack of nuance in politics but sometimes it breaks our way, at least if we don’t wring our hands too much about how unfair we’re being to plutocratic henchman and how *concerned* we are that this will backfire.
JCT
@kay:
This. I was interviewing for a job at UMich Med School back in 2006 and they *repeatedly* commented on how they were responsible for the health car of the local car manufacturers and they viewed it as a hugh component of their overall security — and enjoyed comparing it to the hospitals in NYC that were getting battered.
I just hope all of the folks out there get out and vote for Obama. I’m in a potential swing state for the first time in my life and looking forward to it.
SiubhanDuinne
@General Stuck:
@gaz:
I didn’t know what the exact joke was going to be, but I predicted several days ago that he would turn the “Obama ate a dog” meme into a zinger at the WHCD. He didn’t disappoint :-)
Hungry Joe
Romney reminds me of a character in Manil Suri’s novel “The Death of Vishnu” (I’m pretty sure that’s where I read it) — an Indian civil servant who lies about everything. He even lies about what he brings for lunch, the narrator says, then he has to go up on the roof to eat lunch so no one can see that he lied. (Good novel, by the way.)
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Gian:
Orwell’s 1984 technique only works if there’s active suppression (or outright destruction) of other sources. I’m actually kind of surprised that the Rove/Romney team is taking this approach, because we have the youtubez now. I assume (and hope) that the DNC has captured and preserved every second of the GOP debates, as the footage will no doubt be scrubbed at some point.
Romney’s handwaving might have worked in 1968 or 1972, but I just don’t see it working on anyone who wasn’t predisposed to vote for Romney in the first place. As another poster pointed out, “LET DETROIT GO BANKRUPT” is pretty damned clear.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
You see there…you edjumacated me in various ways!
Thank you!
I might add that it’s great to have someone from Malaysia on the board who can give us first person accounts of what is going on there, most interesting and of course of absolutely no interest to the idiots of the Village. Might as well be on the other side of the planet. Well, now that I think about it…
Jilli
This is just another fine example of Willards problem…romnesia.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
And he’s going to destroy Rmoney the same way in the general, all with the most winsome smile as he inserts the shiv.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jilli:
“Romnesia” FTW!!
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: Thanks for the update.
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: The journalism bug never does quite go away does it? I can imagine you typing this with great enthusiasm while Bianca gives you a typical puzzled look. :)
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@Villago Delenda Est: Amir asked if you were referring to Malaysian politics. I thought you were referring to Republican politics
Villago Delenda Est
@Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water:
I can see where my comment could be interpreted that way.
Malay: the ethnicity
Malaysian: the nationality
Amir, correct me with a clue by four if I got that wrong.
Cacti
Romney really has no snappy response for “bin Laden is dead, GM is alive”.
I suspect the Obama team will hammer away at that message, as it’s the kind that sticks in the craw of low information voters.
superluminar, esq
@Amir Khalid:
Please continue with updates, as others have said; alsotoo, what are your thoughts on the long-term future for Malaysia WRT the current unrest…
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti:
Kirk: Everything Harry Mudd says is a lie.
Mudd: Norman, I’m lying to you.
(watch smoke come out of Norman’s ears after several attempts to resolve the problem)
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
Correct. Over here, we’ve been going around and around for decades over what to call our national language. Do we call it Bahasa Malaysia, the Malaysian Language, a language for all Malaysians? Or do we call it Bahasa Melayu, the Malay Language, which ties it to the wider Malay-speaking world encompassing Indonesia, Brunei, and communities as far away as Africa and South America — but in Malaysia ties it to a particular ethnic community?
Hill Dweller
@Cacti:
Biden has been hammering that point home for a while. Now they’ve started using Willard’s past statements to point out if he were President, GM would be dead and Bin Laden would be alive.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
My preference “The Malay Language” if it’s the language used by all Malaysians as a common tongue, just as English, and not “American”, is the common tongue in the United States. It’s not de jure, it’s de facto, with the smarter folks appealing to those who are in the assimilation process by providing other language equivalents for both commercial and official communication.
Of course, that course of action is rife with landmines, so perhaps it’s best to sit on the fence.
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
If Bianca wants attention while I’m communing with you guys, what she usually gives me is increasingly impatient meowing, followed by claws to the shin. But her generally affectionate ways and her tongue baths do make up for it.
gocart mozart
You would think Romney would be a much better liar by now, given all the practice he’s had.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
Am I right to assume that part of the panic is that Barisan is afraid that an outright loss in the election would let Pakatan investigate their decades of dirty laundry and prosecute them for their misdeeds?
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
You would be spot on.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
Very interesting stuff. About the only regular coverage I see about the political scene in Malaysia is in The Economist, and I do not know how accurate this is. I know that there America coverage is sometimes amazingly wrong, because while the basic facts might be correct, they get the essence and the background totally wrong.
Amir Khalid
@gocart mozart:
Mitt is like the athlete who doesn’t improve with more training: he keeps practicing his mistakes, instead of figuring them out and practicing the corrections.
Nellcote
Steve Bennen @ Maddow’s blog does a weekly roundup of Mitt’s Mendacity
Martin
It really is a terrible lie, because Romney of all people should know that even when investing is flowing right along that the private equity funds don’t have $75b to drop in one industry. And in 2008 when those funds were losing money hand over fist they sure as shit weren’t going to take a risk on GM when they weren’t even willing to risk on GE.
Yutsano
Hmpf. No hat tip Kay? :)
When I first read this I was beyond gobsmacked. First of all bankruptcy is by very definition a government process (it’s even in the precious Constitution!) and second the volume of money that needed to be moved around in general couldn’t be because no private actor even knew how much they had. Willard just sucks at this, and I still don’t know how Fehnstrom has a job. Unless he’s a Mormon.
Cain
Wait till Romney takes credit for the health care bill!
schrodinger's cat
@Yutsano: How are you feeling this afternoon?
Yutsano
@schrodinger’s cat: Nervous. I’m two weeks away from the big day and I still have too much shit to get done. The really interesting part is I may have a new job when I’m off the recovery period. I got the e-mail saying I was qualified two weeks ago and now I’m on IRS time as far as the hiring.
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
The idiot who publicly compared his boss to an Etch-a-Sketch still has a job with the Mitt campaign because there, competence is the firing offense. Remember the debate coach who was brought in to prep Mitt for the debates?He did so well that the news media took notice of him. Mitt (or his senior people) either thought the media attention, unsought by the debate coach, was stealing Mitt’s thunder; or they feared people might put two and two together and conclude that Mitt needed such help in the first place (as if anyone could look at Mitt himself and not come to that conclusion). Whichever it was, the debate coach got fired, essentially for doing his job right.
David Koch
You’re the best, Kay.
Keep the posts coming.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
I remember the stories about how much this new debate coach had helped Romney. I had no idea that the guy had been fired.
But then again, Romney has spoken about how much he loves to fire people. Let’s hope that these bonehead tactical moves by Romney and his staffers continue.
AxelFoley
@Amir Khalid:
Forgive me for butting in, but is Bianca a woman or a cat? Just curious, because when you were talking about her distracting you, my mind was thinking about something else.
Amir Khalid
@AxelFoley:
These hints should help you make a good guess.
Roger Moore
@AxelFoley:
You don’t know Yutsano very well, then. If it were a person scratching him to get his attention, it wouldn’t be a woman.
Yutsano
@Roger Moore: Well to be fair, it’s in reference to a comment I made about Amir’s kitteh.
AxelFoley
@Amir Khalid:
Yeah, I thought about that, but I know some women who do that. ;)
AxelFoley
@Roger Moore:
Oh, I knew Yutsano prefers to be scratched by men. ;) I thought we were talking about Amir.
Roger Moore
@Yutsano:
Oops. Shows how carefully I’m following the thread.
Rabble Arouser
@Brachiator: Romney’s lying style is as smooth as day-old scotch.