A Romney spokesman said on Tuesday that the president’s plan was modeled after one Mr. Romney advocated in 2008. “Mitt Romney had the idea first,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, a Romney spokesman, citing the Times opinion article. “You have to acknowledge that. He was advocating for a course of action that eventually the Obama administration adopted.”

Wow! Mitt Romney is actually eager to claim credit for one of President Obama's policies, namely the auto rescue package that saved the American auto industry:

Now that's not something you see every day, a Republican presidential candidate tripping over himself to take credit for something associated with the Obama administration. But just you wait because there's a catch:

But Mr. Fehrnstrom also accused Mr. Obama of wasting billions of dollars “propping up” the auto companies as part of the government’s restructuring plans for the industry. “Mitt Romney argued that instead of a bailout, we should let the car companies go through a restructuring under the bankruptcy laws,” Mr. Fehrnstrom said.

Keep in mind that's from the very same article. Basically Mitt Romney's campaign seems to be saying that (a) the auto rescue plan worked and it was his idea and he deserves the credit and (b) it was a terrible idea and should have been done completely differently so Obama sucks.

So which comes closer to the truth of Romney's position? I'll go with option B, because as the article points out in 2009, Mitt Romney called the auto rescue plan "tragic" and said it represented something "very sad" for America. Moreover, in 2008 he said "if you write a check, they are going to go out of business."

Well, we wrote a check, that check has now been paid off, and the industry is recovering—no thanks to Mitt Romney or anyone else in the Republican field.