FACT CHECK: Artful Swerves On The Auto Bailout

CALVIN WOODWARD

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michigan has become squirm central for Republican presidential candidates who are trying to explain their opposition to the auto bailout before the big primary in the home of automakers. Their tale is terribly tangled, and President Barack Obama isn't telling it straight either.

Obama, in taking credit, and Republicans, in assigning blame, have ignored one driving force behind the love-it-or-hate-it bailout: George W. Bush in the waning days of his presidency. Moreover, GOP rivals Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum would have people believe the United Auto Workers union runs General Motors and the government "gave" it away, neither true.

The issue is a particularly nettlesome one for Romney, Detroit-born son of a Michigan governor and auto company chief executive. His provocatively headlined 2008 article, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt," has made for tortured explanations in the campaign for the Feb. 28 primary — though the prescription he preached back then is not wholly at odds with what the government finally did.

Then again, Romney is hardly out on a Republican limb. Santorum opposes the bailout on similar grounds. As for the other candidates, Newt Gingrich raised the wild idea that Washington might force people to buy GM cars, and Ron Paul believes the market should let companies rise or fall without the government's intervention.

A look at some of the persistent claims about the bailout and how they compare with the facts:

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ROMNEY: "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." — Nov. 18, 2008, New York Times op-ed article.

SANTORUM: "If they'd have gone through the orderly bankruptcy process, gone through a structured bankruptcy, they'd have come out in the same place, only we would have kept the integrity of the bankruptcy process without the government putting its fingers into it." — June 13 New Hampshire debate.