In an interview with ABC News on Wednesday morning, Willard once again rewrote history on his position about the government's rescue of the auto industry. He's been playing this little game for months.

Let's be clear. Willard opposed the bailout, which began under George W. Bush and continued under President Obama. Period.

“My view with regards to the bailout was that, whether it was by President Bush or by President Obama, it was the wrong way to go,” he said, during the event at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, sponsored by CNBC.

The problem is, if there hadn't been a bailout, there would be no auto industry.

“Without the intervention of the Bush and Obama administrations, we would have seen the liquidation of both Chrysler and probably GM,” Cole said in August. “That would have taken the whole industry down. We would have seen a disaster in terms of the job impact.”

Something in the range of one million jobs would've been lost.

Willard wants to take credit for favoring a managed bankruptcy -- which is something the Obama administration proposed early on -- and simultaneously bash the bailout.

This is much like bragging about the fact you opposed using a defibrillator on a patient who's heart had stopped--but were right about the antibiotics he was put on later.

Amazing that he keeps getting away with it.

President Barack Obama took an oath to "promote the general Welfare." Venture capitalist Mitt Romney pledged to maximize shareholder value. Unfortunately, candidate Mitt Romney is pretending the two are the same thing. As Romney repeatedly insisted this month, President Obama's rescue of the U.S. auto industry and over one million jobs associated with it is little different than his own Bain Capital days of slashing jobs - and extracting profits.

Romney introduced the new defense of his "vulture capital" past during the December 15 GOP debate in Sioux City, Iowa. There, he took Obama to task for layoffs at General Motors as part of the successful auto bailout Romney opposed:

"In the real world, some things don't make it, and I believe I've learned from my successes and my failures. The President, I'll look at and say: 'Mr. President, how did you do when you were running General Motors as the president, took it over? Gee, you closed down factories. You closed down dealerships. And he'll say: 'Well, I did that to save the business.' Same thing with us, Mr. President. We did our very best to make those businesses succeed. I'm pleased that they did, and I've learned the lessons of how the economy works. This president doesn't know how the economy works. I believe to create jobs, it helps to have created jobs."

Days later, the son of American Motors magnate George Romney repeated the talking point:

"The president has had one experience overseeing an enterprise -- a couple of enterprises, General Motors and Chrysler," Romney told Fox News in an interview that aired Sunday. "What did he do? He closed factories. He laid off people. He didn't do it personally, but his people did. Why did he do that? Because he wanted to save the enterprise, and he wants to make it profitable so it can survive."

No. In 2009, President Obama was trying to save an entire industry, one at the very heart of American manufacturing. In so doing, Obama likely helped save the United States from a second Great Depression.

As McClatchy reported this week:

U.S. and foreign automakers are poised to add nearly 167,000 U.S. jobs by the end of 2015, according to the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. That breaks down to 30,000 hourly and salaried workers at the Big Three U.S. automakers, 17,000 jobs at foreign automakers and about 120,000 auto-supply sector jobs...

Most analysts say the industry's growing stability is sweet vindication for the federal government's $80 billion bailout, which allowed General Motors and Chrysler to reorganize. The Center for Automotive Research estimates that the bailouts saved more than 1.1 million jobs in 2009 and another 314,000 in 2010, while avoiding personal income losses of more than $96 billion.

(The November 2010 CAR analysis is available here.)

And over time, the federal tax revenue from that personal and business income will more than offset any potential losses the government might sustain from its future sales of GM stock. As USA Today noted in June in admitting the success of the Obama administration's bailout of Detroit:

That loss is nothing to sneeze at. It's a heck of a lot better, though, than the $108 billion to $156 billion the government would have lost over three years if it hadn't intervened, according to the Center for Automotive Research, a Detroit-based think tank. Those losses would have come in the form of lower tax receipts and higher spending for pension guarantees, jobless pay and other benefits.

As for Mitt Romney, who famously insisted in November 2008 that Washington should "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," USA Today rightly pointed out, "On what planet would the automakers have found private lenders willing to provide tens of billions of dollars in needed bankruptcy financing at the height of a financial panic?"

In a nutshell, President Obama's tough actions, including painful layoffs and pay cuts for auto workers, saved American jobs, American taxpayer revenue and perhaps the American economy. But for Mitt Romney and his Bain colleagues, the benefits often went into their pockets alone.

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A C&L reader sent in the following horror story:

I have continued to follow C&L through the years and enjoy the attention you give to the issues. I have seen a lot recently about home foreclosures and the ugly means banks are employing to get their hands on people’s property. I would like to ask that you also give some attention to another illegal activity going on—illegal car repossessions.

I have leased cars from Chrysler Financial and Beurge Chrysler Jeep since 2002. When my second lease came to an end in June of this year I had three options offered me by Chrysler: 1-buy the car, 2-turn the car in and begin a new lease or purchase another vehicle, or 3-extend the lease for up to 12 additional months. Since my wife and I are experiencing some rough financial times we decided to go with Option 3-extend our lease. We continued to do so each month until we could buy the car sometime in the next year. However, on September 20 a man showed up at our door claiming Chrysler had ordered a repossession. He refused to give any identification or proof of the order. He also refused to look at the documentation we had that proves our account is on good standing. In fact we had just received confirmation earlier that day that payment had been received for the next month. He took the car anyway.

We have tried, without success, to reach Chrysler Financial and resolve this issue. At first we thought it must be a simple mistake that Chrysler would correct. It does not appear that way anymore. Based on what we have been told by Chrysler reps, Chrysler wanted the car back because it had very low mileage and they could make a bigger profit than by allowing us to continue leasing and purchase at a later date. We have looked at the law and the only way a car can be repossessed is if the account is in default. I want to reiterate that our account has never been in default.

So, we are left without a car—that was our only vehicle. My wife is disabled and needs weekly treatment that she has not been getting because we can’t get her to appointments.

I am telling you this story because we have learned that we are not the only ones to have this happen. A Google search will bring up many pages of illegal repossessions being reported. I understand it may not be the eye-catching news item of 100k home foreclosures but it is happening to thousands of people who have done nothing wrong and yet are being bullied and deprived of their transportation by a company that received taxpayer money and wants to make more money. And BTW, Chrysler refuses to return the payment we made for 9/20—10/20, a period for which we do not have use of our car.

Thank you for any attention you can bring to this issue.

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Mashable had this interesting little blurb about Chrysler's official Twitter account and the f-bomb earlier today, so I decided to look at New Media Strategies a little closer for two reasons: First, because it amazes me that anyone calling themselves a "new media strategist" could send a tweet like the one pictured above, as retweeted. And second, I wanted to see what other companies NMS has as clients.

After reading their executive bios, it was abundantly clear that they are a right-wing firm with many conservative ties. After all, when the public affairs VP has to be specific about overseeing a "bipartisan group", you've got to wonder why that disclaimer is there, since one would assume that a public affairs director would naturally be bipartisan?

I wondered aloud on Twitter about why Chrysler, of all companies, would hire a right-wing new media firm and was met with some derision and scorn over my characterization of NMS as such.

Then this crossed my tweet stream, courtesy of Lee Fang at Think Progress.

Last year, Koch Industries began employing New Media Strategies (NMS), an Internet PR firm that specializes in “word-of-mouth marketing” for major corporations including Coca-Cola, Burger King, AT&T, Dodge and Ford. It appears that, ever since the NMS contract was inked with Koch, an NMS employee began editing the Wikipedia page for “Charles Koch,” “David Koch,” “Political activities of the Koch family,” and “The Science of Success” (a book written by Charles). Under the moniker of “MBMAdmirer,” NMS employees edited Wikipedia articles to distance the Koch family from the Tea Party movement, to provide baseless comparisons between Koch and conspiracy theories surrounding George Soros, and to generally delete citations to liberal news outlets. After administrators flagged the MBMAdmirer account as a “sock puppet” — one of many fake accounts used to manipulate new media sites — a subsequent sock puppet investigation found that MBMAdmirer is connected to a number of dummy accounts and ones owned by NMS employees like Jeff Taylor.

In a bid to undo a Wikipedia-imposed ban, the MBMAdmirer account now acknowledges that it works for Koch Industries. The tactics used by Koch’s PR firm clearly violate the ethics rules laid out by Wikipedia against sock puppet manipulation.

[...]
Soren Dayton, a GOP operative and executive at New Media Strategies, is reported to be the contact for Koch Industries at NMS. Reached by phone yesterday by ThinkProgress, Dayton exclaimed, “I’m not going to talk about this, thanks,” before hanging up. Lyndsey Medsker, a senior account director for NMS, spoke to ThinkProgress today. She explained that NMS also maintains the Koch Industries Twitter page, Facebook page, and has an active team working on promoting Koch Industries in the comment section of blogs and news websites.

Well, yeah, I guess I wasn't completely out of line in my original assessment and question, now was I?

Did someone in the Obama administration force Chrysler, as part of its reorganization, to order the closure of auto dealerships mostly among Republicans, while leaving Democratic-owned dealerships intact?

Naaaah. What, are you kidding me? But, you know, it sounded really good to Michelle Malkin. Mostly because she loves to fancy herself an "investigative journalist" and these kinds of "scoops" entrance her on a regular basis. Of course, the fact that none of them ever pan out seems not to deter her in the slightest.

Malkin, along with her intrepid pals at Newsbusters and a variety of other right-wing blogs, were all over it yesterday. Malkin appeared on Fox and Friends in the morning to tout her latest liberal-perfidy theory.

Too bad it took only a flick of Nate Silver's wrist to blow it all to smithereens. Seems that when you go looking at political donations by occupation, people who list "auto dealers" or some variation thereof are Republican by about an 8-1 margin:

Overall, 88 percent of the contributions from car dealers went to Republican candidates and just 12 percent to Democratic candidates. By comparison, the list of dealers on Doug Ross's list (which I haven't vetted, but I assume is fine) gave 92 percent of their money to Republicans -- not really a significant difference.

There's no conspiracy here, folks -- just some bad math.

It shouldn't be any surprise, by the way, that car dealers tend to vote -- and donate -- Republican. They are usually male, they are usually older (you don't own an auto dealership in your 20s), and they have obvious reasons to be pro-business, pro-tax cut, anti-green energy and anti-labor. Car dealerships need quite a bit of space and will tend to be located in suburban or rural areas. I can't think of too many other occupations that are more natural fits for the Republican Party.

You can just toss this one on the ashheap of such discarded Malkin "investigative scoops" as the General Ripperesque notion that the Flight 93 memorial is actually a tribute to the terrorists or that a suicide bomber in Oklahoma was the forerunner of an Islamic conspiracy there. She likewise groundlessly attacked the Pulitzer winner in photography as a secret Jihadi sympathizer; attacked USA Today with conspiratorial accusations for a badly retouched photo; and perhaps most notoriously, tried to ferret out a nefarious conspiracy by the Associated Press in Baghdad that turned out to be completely false. Though perhaps nothing quite matches her attack on a 12-year-old that again turned out to be a case of overwrought right-wing fantasizing. But then, that incident pretty much was a case of self-immolation.

Steve Benen and Bob Cesca have more.

A pretty good barometer of Republicans' utter desperation these days is just how farflung from reality their attempts to characterize President Obama are getting to be.

Newt Gingrich, who's clearly preparing for a 2012 White House run, was interviewed yesterday on Fox by Greta Van Susteren. Gingrich has been trying desperately to smear Obama as a weak leader, while cozying up to the GOP's tea-bagging populist wing.

So he hit on a way to hit both sweet spots in one swell foop: Smear Obama as an incipient authoritarian.

The subject was Obama's press conference earlier this week. First in the order, of course, he had to blame Obama's popularity on the media: "I think the Washington White House press corps has taken such a pathetic dive with this president that they ought to just be part of his PR firm!"

But then he there was this exchange:

Van Susteren: Well, you know, Fox News Channel got, quote, punished -- Fox News Channel didn't get a question the other night -- Major Garrett, our White House correspondent -- because the Fox broadcast, not the Fox News Channel, but the Fox broadcast decided not to air the press conference.

Gingrich: Right. Which should tell all of you about the abuse of power inherent in this administration. They now control General Motors, they basically control Chrysler, they control Citibank, they control AIG, and they are prepared to punish people.

I think that's very dangerous, to have a president who thinks he should get up in the morning and punish Americans. You know, appease foreigners, bow to the Saudi king, embrace the Venezuelan dictator, and punish Americans? I think that's a very dangerous attitude.

Gingrich is clearly counting on the public to be like Fox News anchors: They have a convenient case amnesia about the previous eight years of wiretapping, screw-the-public Republican rule.

But notice the underlying meme here: Obama is an incipient dictator who will punish his enemies and rule with an iron fist. Which, of course, is exactly what we're hearing from the growing militia contingent.

And then conservatives get all bent out of shape when someone like the DHS accidentally points out the growing similarities between them and right-wing extremists. Huh. Gee, wonder how that could happen.

ginandtacos: The difference between the GOP and a monkey is that the latter can learn from its mistakes.

MojoPost: Black woman struggles to make ends meet

Mock, Paper, Scissors: Compare and contrast Specter - McCain AIPAC donations

Colorado Independent: Lying Republican bigot (Dept. of Redundancy Dept.) calls Matthew Shepard murder a "hoax" in hate-crimes debate

Calculated Risk: Chrysler deal collapses, bankruptcy all but certain

BAGnewsNotes: Refusing to move for Darfur

I can't begin to tell you just how little sympathy I have for the Wall Street bankers who bitch and moan about how impossible it would be to live in NYC on "only" $250K. (My kid manages to live there on considerably less.)

No, my sympathies lie with people like this who worked hard, played by the rules and are now caught in an economic disaster:

As the Obama administration prepares to send Chrysler into bankruptcy court, with General Motors possibly to follow, one of the biggest losers may be the automakers' current and future retirees, a group of nearly 1 million people who could see their pensions and health-care funds slashed by tens of billions of dollars.

The loss could pose political trouble for the Obama administration, which has pressed both automakers since February to ready themselves for bankruptcy as a means of purging their overwhelming debts.

The GM and Chrysler pension plans together cover 928,000 people, and many of them worry that the industry restructuring already underway could slice their benefits.

A group of nonunion retirees is scheduled to meet with the administration's auto task force this morning to try to save their pensions and health benefits. The United Auto Workers is also negotiating over changes to the benefits, but has yet to reach an agreement with the Treasury Department, a source familiar with the matter said.

"We are going to do what we can to help protect their benefits to the degree that we can," said an administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. "It's premature to speculate on what will happen. This is certainly a constituency that we are focused on, but we have not and cannot rule anything out."

With Chrysler facing an end-of-month federal deadline to reach agreements with its bankers and the union, stakeholders have been trading a flurry of offers and counteroffers.

In recent weeks, members of the task force have struggled to devise rescue plans and a legal strategy that might protect those workers if the companies file for bankruptcy. But experts say an outcome is difficult to predict.

"I feel betrayed," said Vicki Prout, 57, a former executive assistant at Chrysler whose 23-year career there included typing speeches for Lee Iacocca when he was chief executive. "They offered these incentives for us to take early retirement, and I took one. Now it looks like my fixed income wasn't so fixed."

She estimated that her monthly payment would be cut in half if the pension is terminated in a bankruptcy. She has started looking for jobs around her home in Troy, Mich., but said there are not many to find.

"I feel like I've been caught in a storm," she said.