Mitt Romney won’t “light his hair on fire” just to excite the conservative base, he admitted to an audience Tuesday. President Obama offered him a helpful political clinic the same day, rousing a crowd of auto workers with a fiery speech in which he took direct aim at Romney’s opposition to bailing out Detroit.
“I’ve got to admit, it’s been funny to watch some of these politicians completely rewrite history now that you’re back on your feet,” Obama told a UAW convention in Washington. “These are the folks who said if we went forward with our plan to rescue Detroit, ‘you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.’ Now they’re saying they were right all along!”
The alternative to federal help, Obama said, “was to do nothing, and allow these companies to fail. In fact, some politicians said we should. Some even said we should ‘let Detroit go bankrupt.'”
The line was a clear reference to Romney’s 2008 New York Times op-ed “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” in which he suggested the companies go through a managed bankruptcy process.
“You remember that,” Obama added. “You know.”
While Romney and Santorum are at each other’s throats in Michigan, Obama took advantage of being unopposed — transforming into the old, electrifying candidate that Democrats remember and that the GOP has been aching to replicate.
Obama’s allusions to Romney came just as the former Massachusetts governor faces criticism from other Democrats, the local press and even some Republican supporters in Michigan for his confusing bailout position. Romney claims he would have saved the auto industry as president, but has not specified exactly how much government help — if any — would have been needed to do so.
Recalling Romney’s suggestions that auto companies could have gotten funding elsewhere, Obama reminded the audience that there were no private-sector loans available at the time and without his help “all of you — the men and women who built these companies with your own hands — would’ve been hung out to dry.”
In another dig at a rival, Obama went off his prepared remarks to say that he wanted to save middle-class jobs in Detroit in part so workers’ kids could “yes, go to college.” Rick Santorum said earlier this week that Obama was a “snob” for suggesting all Americans should have the opportunity for higher education.
Speaking with the preacher’s cadence that was his trademark on the 2008 campaign trail, Obama said workers’ concessions on wages and benefits to make the bailout were a shining example of America’s sense of community.
“You want to talk about values?” he asked. “Hard work — that’s a value. Looking out for one another — that’s a value. The idea that we’re all in it together — that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper — that is a value.”
He continued: “But they’re still talking about you as if you’re some greedy special interest that needs to be beaten. Since when are hardworking men and women special interests? Since when is the idea that we look out for each other a bad thing?”
Obama’s community organizer days don’t come up much since he took office, but the president reminded the workers of his background in Chicago in pledging to support their cause.
“Don’t forget I got my start standing with working folks who’d lost jobs and hope when nearby steel plants closed down, because I didn’t like the idea that they didn’t have anybody to fight for them,” he said. “That still drives me today. So I’ll promise you this: as long as you’ve got an ounce of fight left in you, I’ll have a ton of fight left in me.”
Obama’s speech comes as polls show his popularity rising and Romney’s position in general election match-ups sinking fast. The event was a jarring contrast to Romney’s recent performances on the campaign trail, which included a much panned address on the economy before a small, listless audience at Ford Field in Detroit.
