In an effort to win over auto workers in Ohio and across the Midwest, Team Romney this week unveiled a jaw-droppingly fraudulent ad rewriting Mitt's opposition to the federal bailout that saved the entire industry. But largely overlooked in the shocked response to his bogus claims about Jeep shipping U.S. jobs to China has been the union-bashing that was at the center of Romney's primary campaign to win the Republican nomination for president. As a quick glance reveals, Mitt Romney may profess "I love American cars," but not the Americans who make them.

During the GOP primaries, Governor Romney didn't merely back a national "right to work" law, support Ohio Governor John Kasich's now-overridden SB5 law banning collective bargaining rights for all public employees and denounce President Obama's appointees to the National Labor Relations Board as "union stooges." (That last charge was particularly ironic, given the later resignation of a Republican NLRB member for leaking confidential information to the Romney campaign.) Using vitriolic language his campaign would prefer Ohioans forget, Mitt Romney blasted the United Auto Workers despite the sacrifices its members made to save Detroit. As he boasted in Grand Rapids, Michigan back in February:

"I call it crony capitalism and that's the path that [Barack Obama] is taking. He got hundreds of millions of dollars from labor bosses for his campaign. And so, he's paying them back in every way he knows how. One way, of course, was giving General Motors and Chrysler to the UAW. I saw that Bob King said that I don't care about the auto industry. I'm sorry, Mr. King. I care very deeply about the auto industry. I want to make sure we have good jobs, not just for a few weeks but for many, many years. I want the auto industry to come back in a big way and I've taken on union bosses before, I'm happy to take them on again because I happen to believe that you can protect the interests of the American taxpayers and you can protect a great industry like automobiles without having to give in to the UAW and I sure won't."

Not to content to stop there, Romney in a Valentine's Day op-ed called President Obama's successful rescue of the auto industry a "sweetheart deal" and "crony capitalism on a grand scale."

Instead of doing the right thing and standing up to union bosses, Obama rewarded them...This was crony capitalism on a grand scale. 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.

In reality, there was no truth to Romney's charge that "The president gave the (auto) companies to the UAW." As Politifact explained:

The reality is Obama was in charge of a bailout deal that resulted in the union's health care trust owning stock in Chrysler and GM. But the trust was owed money to pay for health care under the terms of labor contracts the car companies signed. And the union "gave" plenty too -- in the form of wages, vacation and job security. In that light, the arrangement was a tradeoff, not a giveaway.

What tips Romney's claim even further from reality is the fact that the union itself does not own any GM or Chrysler stock. The trust that manages health benefits for retirees is the stockholder, and it is independent from the UAW. It is not a majority shareholder in either company, nor does it have a vote on the board.

While Romney's union-bashing might play well with conservative Republican primary voters, the general election is another matter altogether.

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It's as if Mitt Romney simply can't help himself. Gripped by an irresistible obsession to become President of the United States, Romney will lie to voters on almost any issue, large or small. And on no point is Romney's compulsion to fabricate more pathological than on President Obama's successful rescue of the American auto industry. As his new ad designed to dupe voters in Ohio and across the industrial Midwest makes clear, the same Mitt Romney who was content to "let Detroit go bankrupt" now pretends to be its savior.

The text of the new Romney spot seems impressive. Of course, it would be impressive if any of it was true.

"Who will do more for the auto industry? Not Barack Obama. Fact-checkers confirm his attacks on Mitt Romney are false. The truth? Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry. He's supported by Lee Iacocca and the Detroit News. Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job."

Even by Mitt Romney's standard, the lie-per-second ratio is unprecedented. While his supposed "plan to help the auto industry" remains a mystery, the truth of President Obama's auto rescue is not.

For starters, Jeep is expanding production in the growing market of China and not, as Romney pretended on Friday, "thinking of moving all production to China." It's no wonder the Detroit Free Press reported that "Romney camp silent on his Jeep-to-China gaffe." To call it a "gaffe" is an act of journalistic kindness. But given Paul Ryan's continuing fraud about President Obama's supposedly broken promise to keep GM's Janesville, Wisconsin plant open, Romney's latest fraud should come as no surprise.

Of course, Romney's claim that "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy" is a smokescreen for his November 2008 op-ed opposing President Bush's bailout for Detroit. As he put it four years ago:

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[h/t Heather at VideoCafe]

Mitt Romney's rewrite of the auto bailout and China investments in the debate gave President Obama a wide-open door to employ the Reagan "there you go again" strategy on Mitt Romney, particularly in this exchange (though there were many) about China and Detroit. The scene opens just after Mitt has made a particularly specious attack on the president, claiming once again that Obama's China policies haven't worked, and in probably the most cynical statement of the evening, they're causing jobs to be shipped overseas. Yes, he actually said that, and the president wasn't going to let him get away with it.

OBAMA: Well, Governor Romney's right, you are familiar with jobs being shipped overseas because you invested in companies that were shipping jobs overseas.

And, you know, that's -- you're right. I mean that's how our free market works. But I've made a different bet on American workers.

If we had taken your advice Governor Romney about our auto industry, we'd be buying cars from China instead of selling cars to China.

Mitt was not amused, and then made a typically cynical play on the assumption that people in Ohio and Michigan would be stupid enough to believe this:

I'm a son of Detroit. I was born in Detroit. My dad was head of a car company. I like American cars. And I would do nothing to hurt the U.S. auto industry. My plan to get the industry on its feet when it was in real trouble was not to start writing checks. It was President Bush that wrote the first checks. I disagree with that. I said they need -- these companies need to go through a managed bankruptcy. And in that process, they can get government help and government guarantees, but they need to go through bankruptcy to get rid of excess cost and the debt burden that they'd -- they'd built up.

Yeah, no. He said nothing of the kind. Nothing like that whatsoever. He objected from the get-go to any government guarantees of any kind, which President Obama tried to point out, only to get the usual Romney smackdown tossed at him: "I'm still speaking." That's code for shut up and sit down, oh you're already sitting then shut up already. In case you didn't know.

When President Obama was finally able to speak, no thanks to Bob Schieffer, the worst moderator of the four, he said this:

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If Detroit Emergency Manager and Rick Snyder appointee Roy Roberts thought it was a good idea to pink slip all of Detroit's teachers, gut funding for schools and then force a contract on those teachers who were returning, he hasn't come face to face with AFT President Randi Weingarten recently. She and over 500 angry teachers had a message for Roberts: You had better sit down at the table and start negotiating rather than dictating.

Weingarten met with Roberts for about 45 minutes Friday after firing up the troops at a general session of about 3,000 teacher-delegates. As things stand now, the "new", imposed contract by Roberts ignores teachers' concerns while he imposes total control over the schools. As Weingarten said, "[Roberts] has used that power to gut school funding, pink-slip every teacher and slash teacher pay. He has refused to negotiate with us to solve the deep challenges that Detroit schools face."

Those paragraphs tell you a story, but they don't tell you the story. My last encounter with Randi Weingarten was last November, when I got to see her vision of "solution-driven unionism" in action in McDowell County, West Virginia. Recognizing that poverty is one of the biggest barriers to students' success in school, the AFTis partnering with local and state government, private enterprise, and charitable organizations to not only educate children, but improve their lives and the lives of their families.

It's working, too. As Weingarten pointed out in her keynote today, Cincinnati students are achieving at a higher rate than other schools in Ohio based on a similar model of uniting those they represent with those they serve. Or in simpler terms, widen the community from the ranks of union members to the community. If you think union membership is simply about strikes and contracts, I challenge you to think again.

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Two funny things happened this week on Mitt Romney's way to the White House. First, the man who cried "let Detroit go bankrupt" announced "I'll take a lot of credit" for President Obama's million-job saving rescue of the American auto industry. But just as telling was the Republican's claim that, despite Obama's "Forward" campaign slogan, it was the President who was "looking backward." After all, Mitt Romney isn't merely offering an even more reactionary resurrection of George W. Bush's failed policies. As it turns out, from his charges on immigration reform and women's issues to labeling Obama an out of touch "Marie Antoinette" and so much else, Romney's strategy is call to the kettle black.

(Click a link below for the details on each.)

• "Looking Backward"
• "Fairness"
• "Out of Touch"
• "Spent Too Much Time at Harvard"
• "Hide-and-Seek Campaign"
• "Broke His Promise to Hispanics"
• "Respect Women in All Those Choices That They Make"

"Looking Backward"

In April, the RNC's Alexandra Franceschi gave away the game when she explained that even after the calamitous Bush recession which began over four years ago, the2012 GOP economic platform would be the Bush program, "just updated." As a quick glance at Mitt Romney's proposals shows, Franceschi has a gift for understatement.

Romney, after all, is promising massive tax cuts which would deliver the lion's share of their winnings to the very richest Americans, his family included. (His 20 percent across-the-board tax cut is simply a tired retread of Bob Dole's failed 1996 plan, one that nevertheless steers a third of its benefits to the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of Americans.) He nevertheless pledges to balance the budget even while boosting defense spending. And this latest scion of a proud Republican family would like to privatize Social Security and leave Americans to fend for themselves in the private health insurance marketplace.

Undaunted, Romney slammed the President this week in East Lansing, Michigan:

"Looking backward won't solve the problems of today, nor will it take advantage of the opportunities of tomorrow," Romney said. "His are the policies of the past. The challenges of the present and the promise of tomorrow must be met by a new and bold vision for the future, and I will bring it."

Despite the conclusion of the nonpartisan CBO and the overwhelming consensus of economists that Obama's actions saved the U.S. from "Great Depression 2.0," Romney has insisted for months that the President "made the economy worse." Unfortunately for Mitt, "we are not stupid."

"Fairness"

Barack Obama has made "fairness" a central theme of his reelection campaign. And with good reason. After all, at a time of record income inequality and the lowest federal tax burden since 1950, Both Mitt Romney and his budgetary twin Paul Ryan would deliver a massive tax cut windfall for the rich, paying for it by gutting the social safety net each pretends to protect. Each would end Medicare as we know it with a premium support gambit that would dramatically shift health care costs to America's seniors. While increasing defense spending, the House Budget Chairman and the GOP frontrunner would repeal the Affordable Care and leave at least 30 million people without insurance. And despite their mutual pledges to end many tax loopholes and deductions to fund their gilded-class giveaway, neither Paul Ryan nor Mitt Romney has the courage to say which ones. As a result, these supposed deficit hawks would actually add trillions more in red ink to the national debt.

Nevertheless, Romney used the occasion of his Northeast primary sweep three weeks ago to portray himself as the crusader for fairness:

"We will stop the unfairness of urban children being denied access to the good schools of their choice; we will stop the unfairness of politicians giving taxpayer money to their friends' businesses; we will stop the unfairness of requiring union workers to contribute to politicians not of their choosing; we will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the taxpayers they serve; and we will stop the unfairness of one generation passing larger and larger debts on to the next."

Afterwards, The Democratic Strategist translated Romney's cynically transparent gimmick, "We will twist and distort the concept of fairness to justify bashing government workers, crushing labor unions and privatizing public schools."

"Out of Touch"

Four years ago, the campaign of John McCain - a hundred-millionaire who literally lost count of how many homes he owned - unsuccessfully tried to portray Barack Obama as an out-of-touch, arugula-eating elitist who vacationed in exotic Hawaii. Now Mitt Romney has branded President Obama a modern day Marie Antoinette, an "out of touch" occupant of the White House whose message to financially struggling Americans is "let them eat cake."

That might not be the wisest strategy.

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Mary McBroom told us her story at a closed Starbucks restaurant in Detroit. It's one we've heard too many times before: For 18 years she worked hard for her employer, GE before discovering GE cared less about her than she did about the company. Mary was not an unskilled worker: she wired circuit boards, most recently for Chevy Volt charging stations. Hired in 1991, she was a college graduate who had worked her way up in the company from entry level wages to $23 per hour in 2009.

Along the way, she raised two daughters and sent them to college, bought a house, saved for retirement, and did all the things "responsible people" do. Mary is a college graduate with a passion for giving her job her all. Even as she told her story, it was evident that more than feeling angry, she was hurt.

In 2009 GE laid Mary off due to the economic downturn with the promise that there was always a possibility she could be called back. On May 13, 2011 she was called back to the same job she had before the layoff. GE trumpeted the recall as a Big Move, publishing a "Welcome Back" to the eleven employees.

Yet, on her first day back she was told that she was classified as a "competitive wage" employee, and would be paid $13 per hour to do the same work she had been paid $23 per hour to do. She was expected to work alongside co-workers making the higher wage who had managed to get their 20 years of service so they could be considered "legacy employees." Worse, some of the coworkers receiving the higher rate had been hired one week before Mary. Whether they escaped the layoff or there was another reason, the inescapable fact was that employees were working side-by-side doing the same work, but one employee was paid $13 per hour and the other was being paid $23.67 per hour, and everybody knew it.

Mary's shock quickly turned to action, and she wrote to Human Resources in June, 2011 asking them to reconsider her classification and asking about the status of her pension, which was based on years of service and compensation levels. She also wrote a letter to Jeffrey Immelt expressing her concern that she was being recalled to a job she had done well for 18 years, only to suffer a 40 percent pay cut.

GE's response was to send out an investigator to assess the situation without interviewing any of the "competitive wage" employees causing supervisors and coworkers to be hostile to those who complained. In a second letter to Jeffrey Immelt on September 30, 2011, Mary and her fellow "competitive wage" coworkers asked Immelt to intervene and restore her pay to its former level.

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[h/t David]

In case you're unfamiliar with Eric Fehrnstrom, let me introduce you to him. The original creator of the "Etch-a-Sketch" candidate, Fehrnstrom is Mitt Romney's brain, much like Karl Rove was George Bush's brain. He's counting on each and every person out there to suffer from collective amnesia, too, or just love the Etch-a-Sketch enough to appreciate it when he erases and re-draws a narrative.

Today's picture concerns the auto bailouts and Romney's role in them. Mr. Fehrnstrom would like you to forget the title of Romney's 2008 op-ed, calling to "let Detroit go bankrupt." Or his 2012 op-ed, where he reiterated his 2008 stance.

But if you don't remember those, maybe you remember the primary debates, where he sneered at the bailouts (begun under George W. Bush, by the way) as a "giveaway to the UAW." If you don't, just watch the video at the top of the page.

Today we have the New and Improved Mitt Romney position on the auto bailout, courtesy of Fehrnstrom, via The Hill:

One of Mitt Romney's top advisers said Saturday that President Obama's decision to bailout Chrysler and General Motors was actually Romney's idea.

"[Romney's] position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed. I know it infuriates them to hear that," Eric Fehrnstrom, senior adviser to the Romney campaign, said.

"The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney's advice."
[...]

"The fact that the auto companies today are profitable is because they've shed costs," Fehronstrom said. "The reason they shed those costs and have got their employee labor contracts less expensive is because they went through that managed bankruptcy process. It is exactly what Mitt Romney told them to do."

Welcome to the 2012 general election campaign, where up is down, right is left, wrong is right, and whatever you said yesterday is yesterday's truth because today is a new day with a new truth. This is the cynical Romney campaign at it's lying-est best.

This is an outright lie, and it wasn't Fehrnstrom going off the reservation. It was planned, it relies upon a gullible and uninformed public to accept the lie as truth because memories are too short to remember yesterday and for the most part, the part of the press that reaches the most viewers hasn't bothered to actually call a lie a lie or to pull them up short on any of the lies they've told, so why not?

This is who Mitt Romney is, and Fehrnstrom is merely amplifying it:

[Romney]’s not stupid. He’s not a stumbling, gaffe-prone doof. He’s a soulless, cynical robot who has no problem with saying exactly what he thinks voters want to hear, and he doesn’t care if the subsequent contradictions, flip-flops and nonsense are utterly obvious and transparent. Voters expect politicians to be two-faced and inconsistent, so why not say whatever it takes to make it through the week and over the next hurdle?

The now-infamous line from Romney staffer Eric Fehrnstrom about the campaign resetting its language when the general election begins — like an Etch-A-Sketch — was one of the most glaring examples of meta-cynicism in the history of modern presidential politics. Not only was Fehrnstrom describing the cynical strategy in detail in front of a national audience, but he was cynical enough to believe that voters wouldn’t care — they expect candidates to be shifty, so why the hell not?

Romney is easily the most jaded, cynical presidential politician since Richard Nixon. He operates with the hubristic attitude that voters expect him to be shifty, and therefore he’s allowed to be shifty. The expectation gives him permission to be that caricature.

About one in five people (800,000 people) face hunger or a lack of food daily in metro Detroit. One in four children face hunger or a lack of food in the tri-county area, and half of all children in the City of Detroit are hungry or have no food. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder's response? Cut even more of the shredded safety net. Unemployment benefits were cut from 26 weeks to 20, a 48-month lifetime limit was put on cash assistance programs and an asset test for food stamps that 38 other states removed was added. (Michiganders can't look for much help from the GOP presidential candidates, either.)

Just heartbreaking....

Last week, while working on a documentary about hunger in Michigan, Russ Russell had an experience that left him speechless.

“I was visiting with this family and one of the little boys said he wasn’t going to eat,” said Russell, development director for Forgotten Harvest, a Detroit-based nonprofit that rescues and redistributes fresh food. “He said, ‘Oh, I’m not eating dinner because it’s my brother’s turn tonight. Tomorrow is my night.’”

On Wednesday, state officials charged with helping to meet the needs of Michigan’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens publicly told a much different story. Maura Corrigan, director of Michigan’s Department of Human Services, assured lawmakers that changes to a core social safety-net program -- cash welfare assistance -- aren’t producing the kind of wide-scale woe critics predicted.

"There hasn't been an uptick in the food banks; there hasn't been an uptick in the homeless shelters," Corrigan told the state’s House Appropriations subcommittee on human services, the Detroit Free Press reported Thursday. "It's a dog that didn't bite, as far as we're concerned."

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Just two days out from the all-critical Michigan primary, Mitt Romney headed to Florida Sunday to make a pre-race appearance at the Daytona 500. But for Romney, the trip wasn't just an obligatory pilgrimage to woo the conservative fans who booed Michele Obama and Jill Biden at another event last year. More importantly, Romney was trying to send a double message back to voters in his home state that he's just "a guy from Detroit" who "loves cars." Unfortunately, by declaring "I have some friends who are NASCAR team owners," would-be common man Mitt once again crashed and burned.

Romney's latest misstep came just two days after his "Ford Field Fumble" during which he revealed he owns American four cars to go along with his three houses. (While he is aware that "Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs," in 2007 his wife acknowledged "Mitt doesn't even know the answer to that" when asked how many dressage horses she owns.) Sunday in Daytona, he took his message of "Everyman Mitt from Michigan" and turned it upside-down:

Asked if taking time to appear at Daytona was an indication of his level of confidence going into Tuesday's primary in Michigan, Romney said it wasn't.

"No, it's a sign of a guy who loves cars," Romney said. "And this has always been a place where American cars have shined. And a long history from Daytona being connected with Detroit, with Detroit cars, and with the spirit of America."

Romney was at Daytona last year and said he also has been to the track in New Hampshire. Does he follow the sport?

"Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans," he said. "But I have some friends who are NASCAR team owners."

While perhaps reminding some voters of Romney's two-day career as a hunter during his first White House run ("I've been a hunter pretty much all my life" 48 hours later became "I've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will"), most Americans will simply recall that Mitt will always be on the side of management.

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Members of the United Auto Workers expressed extreme displeasure with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's comment that rather than bail out the auto industry, "we should have let Detroit go bankrupt." They said that Romney doesn't understand that the bailout didn't just save companies and jobs, it saved careers and families. They went further to say that when conservatives like Romney attack unions, what they are really attacking are working people.

The full press release:

UAW members reacted strongly to Mitt Romney's claim that "we should have let Detroit go bankrupt," when the economy and the auto industry were about to collapse.

"He's trying to rewrite history and attack President Obama and the UAW for successfully saving the auto industry," said UAW President Bob King. "He is misleading voters about the president's bold and decisive rescue of the auto industry and about sacrifices made by workers. But voters deserve the truth."

Even prior to the emergency rescue loans, UAW members made deep sacrifices beginning in 2005 to save the company, giving up pay increases, overtime pay, holidays, agreeing to a reduced pay and benefit structure for new hires, and other concessions. President Obama demanded additional concessions and shared sacrifice from both labor and management in exchange for the loans.

In return, America's carmakers retooled to create the energy-efficient cars of the future and repaid their outstanding loans years ahead of schedule.

Rescuing the auto industry saved more than 1.4 million jobs up and down the supply chain.

"There's not a person in Michigan who doesn't have a sister or brother or cousin or friend who is tied to the auto industry," said Stacie Steward, a UAW Local 1700 member and an electrician from Chrysler's Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP) in Sterling Heights, Mich. "Every Michigan citizen should be appalled by what Mitt Romney said."
"It's an attack on American workers," said Jeff Klayo, also of Local 1700 and from SHAP, which was scheduled to close before Chrysler received the loans. "We're out there trying to get the American dream. We're trying to keep our jobs, for a good wage for our family, put food on our table, pay our taxes, continue to work for the company and get the rewards.

"If the company's successful, we can be successful. If the company takes a downturn, we take a downturn with it," he added.

"The president's rescue loans helped the auto industry survive the darkest hour of its history and return to thriving operations today," said King. "These workers from SHAP are evidence. They, along with hundreds of thousands other workers who depend on the auto industry for jobs, were facing a very uncertain future, but today, they are making the Chrysler 200, one of Detroit's new, hot-selling models. UAW members completed negotiations with the domestic automakers this fall with a strategy to make the company successful and to share in its success. And that strategy paid off."

"Americans deserve to know the truth," King added. "The emergency loans worked. GM is once again the world's top carmaker. Its 2011 profit was its largest ever. The auto industry added more than 200,000 jobs in the last two-and-a-half years, and 2011 was the strongest year of industry job growth since 1994. Demand for their cars is going up, so GM, Ford and Chrysler are starting to run three production shifts a day at many plants. Added shifts and new facilities mean jobs for thousands more workers in Michigan, Ohio and other places across the country."

Romney seems to care more about appeasing his allies in the business community than helping out actual working Americans. Good to see that working Americans are fighting back against the lies that Romney and other conservatives are spreading about them.