From POLITICO 44, Jennifer Epstein reports:

President Barack Obama has been digging at Mitt Romney's opposition to the auto bailout for months, but as he spoke to auto workers on Tuesday -- and as Michigan votes in its presidential primary -- he attacked the former Massachusetts governors more forcefully on the issue than ever before.

"It’s been funny to watch some of these politicians completely try to rewrite history now that you’re back on your feet. The same folks who said if we went forward with our plan to rescue Detroit, 'you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.'"

That line, "you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye"? It comes right from the first paragraph of Romney's oft-cited 2008 New York Times op-ed, in which he urged the federal government not to bail out the struggling automakers.

"If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed."

Romney wrote that in October 2008 and still defends his opposition to the bailout, saying in the Detroit News earlier this month that it was "crony capitalism on a grand scale." He added:

"While a lot of workers and investors got the short end of the stick, Obama's union allies -- and his major campaign contributors -- reaped reward upon reward, all on the taxpayer's dime."

In his speech Tuesday to a United Auto Workers union conference in Washington, Obama went after Romney's line of attack.

"Now they’re saying they were right all along.... Or you’ve got folks saying worse, they’re saying that the problem is that you, the workers, made out like bandits in all of this; that saving the American auto industry was just about paying back unions. Really? I mean, even by the standards of this town, that’s a load of you-know-what."

After more than three years of structured bankruptcy and rebuilding, GM earlier this month announced record-setting annual profits of $7.6 billion, and many as a million jobs in the industry have been saved.