There's something big that Mitt Romney needs voters not to understand about the auto rescue, and no matter who calls him out on it, he's going to keep repeating it.

When the American auto industry was nearing collapse in late 2008 and early 2009, Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush first helped General Motors and Chrysler avert immediate bankruptcy and liquidation with a federal bailout. Then, when the companies had been stabilized, Obama's administration helped guide them through a managed bankruptcy. Romney would have skipped the bailout and gone straight to bankruptcy, a plan that would have resulted in disaster. Now, he wants voters to think that because the president eventually took GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy, it was the right answer all along.

UAW President Bob King isn't mincing words with regard to Romney's bailout BS:



"People know he was opposed to it. Why he tries to spin it, I don’t know," King said. "It's just ridiculous ... There was no private money available. If they follow Romney's formula, we would have lost a million jobs." "It was just dishonest," he said in reference to Romney's comments at the debate. "It says something about who he is that he won't admit he was wrong and think he can twist it."

King is more blunt about how silly and dishonest Romney's position on this issue is—which makes sense, since another Romney argument is that union workers should have gotten screwed harder—but many people involved with the auto rescue have been just as clear that Romney's plan for bankruptcy without rescue would have led to disaster.

Chrysler's bankruptcy judge, for instance:



“One thing is clear, without government support in one fashion or another, there were no sources of funding.”

When you step back and look at the bailout, there were two separate presidents, President Bush and President Obama, two Treasury Secretaries, two administrations, that saw the wisdom of how important this industry was to America and its economy. We comprise between, the automotive industry comprises about 3 to 3.5 percent of the total GDP of this country. So to have essentially ceded the basic infrastructure, manufacturing infrastructure of this country and this industry I think would have been a very short-sighted decision.

The CEO of GM Romney's claim that bankruptcy would have been successful without the bailout is like arguing that a car has rolled off the assembly line ready to go just because it has wheels, ignoring that it skipped having the engine installed. If you're just looking at the car from the outside, it might seem plausible. But even a quick glance at the workings show how false it is.

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