The Wages of Spin and Flippery

I think Mitt Romney’s infamous “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” line will likely prove lethal to him in key Midwestern industrial states this November. But behind the headline there’s a dirty little secret: what Romney actually proposed wasn’t that dramatically different from what Obama actually did. The problem is Mitt committed so heavily to the no-bailout, anti-intervention rhetoric, that he’s now saddled with being on the wrong side of Detroit’s comeback. It’s the price of shifting with every political wind. You can flip and flop but it’s hard to flip back a third time.