Romney Defends His Auto Bailout Stance to Detroit - Do you recall Al Core claiming that he invented the Internet? And how about John Kerry being for the Iraq war before he was against, or vice versa. Geez . . .

From The New York Times:

Mitt Romney on Tuesday moved to shore up support in his boyhood home of Michigan, preparing a new television commercial and writing an opinion article defending his 2008 position to let the auto industry go bankrupt.

But the main message of the piece was to defend an Op-Ed article Mr. Romney wrote just two weeks after the nation chose Barack Obama as president in 2008. Published in The New York Times, it had the simple headline “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

Mr. Romney’s explanation is a complicated one, especially given the industry’s remarkable turnaround in the last three years.       

Mr. Romney says he always favored what he calls a “managed bankruptcy” for the auto companies that would have allowed the businesses to restructure and emerge stronger than before. He criticized Mr. Obama for choosing what he called a “bailout” of the industry that benefited big labor unions.

But Mr. Romney next acknowledges that General Motors and Chrysler did in fact go through a “managed bankruptcy” at the urging of Mr. Obama’s administration — and he takes credit for being the one to have the idea first.