Top Mitt Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom vowed that President Obama's auto bailout was the GOP presidential hopeful's idea. Fehrnstrom claimed Obama followed Romney's course to help the auto industry during an appearance at a Saturday roundtable discussion hosted by the The Washington Post.
“His position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed,” Fehrnstrom said. "He said, 'If you want to save the auto industry, just don't write them a check. That will seal their doom. What they need to do is go through a managed bankruptcy process.'"
"The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney's advice," Fehrnstrom added.
Fehrnstrom made headlines back in late March for saying that Romney's GOP primary positions were as erasable as a drawing on an Etch a Sketch. Fehrnstrom's Saturday comments marked a different drawing on the auto bailout than what Romney penned in a November 2008 New York Times op-ed.
Headlined "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," the piece closed with these words:
"In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check," Romney wrote.
According to The Hill, Fehrnstrom pointed to that segment of the op-ed, noting that auto companies are now profitable because of how they cut costs through a "managed bankruptcy."
"It is exactly what Mitt Romney told them to do," Fehrnstrom said.
Over the course of the 2012 campaign, President Barack Obama's campaign has highlighted the successes of his administration's 2009 auto bailout, headed by the 1.4 million jobs that were saved in the process. In a March 2012 ad entitled "Made In America," Obama's campaign did not forget Romney's '08 stance.
"When a million jobs were on the line, every Republican candidate turned their back, even said, 'Let Detroit go Bankrupt,'" the ad said.
