Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) narrowly won the Michigan primary last night despite his rampant opposition to the auto industry rescue that saved the state’s largest industry, likely because his main competition for the primary victory also wanted to let Detroit go bankrupt. But in the two weeks before the primary, Romney’s position was criticized by Michigan Republicans, auto industry insiders, and reporters who covered the rescue, many of whom said Romney’s plan would have killed the American automotive industry.

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), a former candidate for president who endorsed Romney after leaving the race, piled onto that criticism last night during MSNBC’s election coverage, telling the network’s panel that not rescuing the auto industry would have hastened the “deindustrialization of America.” McCotter also criticized Republicans who, like Romney, supported the Wall Street bailout while opposing the auto rescue:

MCCOTTER: But it’s not simply the auto industry. It’s about blue collar jobs, white collar jobs, non-unionized jobs, unionized jobs, and the deindustrialization of America that would have even hastened had those companies been allowed to seize up, go into bankruptcy and put hard-working men and women…high and dry. [...]

Now when you also look at what happened with the bridge loan, as we talked about at the time, President Bush authorized that money to come out of the already-appropriated funds that were targeted to the Wall Street people that caused the problems in the first place. So to my fellow Republicans I’ll simply remind them, if you were in Congress at the point in time or if you were President Bush, you could leave all $700 billion of taxpayers hard-earned money with the Wall Street people, or you could take some back to Main Street to keep America a balanced, vibrant economy. To me there was no choice.

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Romney’s position on Wall Street bailout has varied, but most recently, he offered support for it in a way that resembled the support many of his fellow Republicans had for the auto rescue. “The TARP program, while not transparent and not having been used as wisely it should have been, was nevertheless necessary to keep banks from collapsing in a cascade of failures,” Romney told Reuters. “You cannot have a free economy and free market if there is not a financial system.”

Unfortunately, Romney never felt the same way about the failure of the auto industry, which, according to one estimate, would have lost 1.3 million jobs without the rescue.

Billionaire Warren Buffett’s call to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans has led to a predictable response from Republicans, who think Buffet should just “write a check” if he wants to pay more in taxes. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has repeatedly urged Buffett to do so, and last week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) went farther, calling on Buffett to “write a check and shut up.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who introduced legislation containing a version of the Buffett Rule, slammed Republicans like Christie and McConnell today, saying that their “write a check” defense the tax code makes taxes “optional” for the wealthy, allowing them to “decide whether or not” they have to pay taxes:

WALDRON: Chris Christie, Mitch McConnell, a couple of the others have criticized Warren Buffett over the last couple weeks and said, you know, if he’s so disappointed he should just write a check.

WHITEHOUSE: You gotta love this idea that if you’re rich enough, the tax code becomes optional for you and you decide whether or not you’re going to write a check. You’re in a special category of people who doesn’t actually have to pay taxes, they just kind of get to if they feel like it. Let’s just say I haven’t heard them say that about working families.

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Republicans like McConnell and Christie have done their part to make taxes on the wealthy as optional as possible. Despite the fact that the wealthiest Americans have seen their tax rates plummet even as their income rises, McConnell and his Republican colleagues have fought attempts to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy or to close loopholes that primarily benefit the rich. Christie, for his part, recently released a tax plan that would give 40 percent of its benefits to New Jersey’s richest one percent.

Buffett, meanwhile, has offered to write a check — as soon as Republicans do too. In January, he told Time Magazine he’d match any voluntary contribution made by Republicans. “I’ll even go three-to-one for McConnell,” Buffett said. So far, he has had to match only one Republican.

Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist — the president of Americans for Tax Reform — has gotten most of the Republican members of Congress to sign his anti-tax pledge, which says that the signing lawmaker will not raise taxes under any circumstances. Last night, during an interview with The Daily Show’s Samantha Bee, Norquist revealed the absurdity of this position, explaining that he is not okay with the government raising taxes even in cases of war, natural disasters, “beard flu,” or to fight “the rise of the apes”:

BEE: Is there a scenario in which you would be comfortable with someone raising taxes?

NORQUIST: No.

BEE: No? War?

NORQUIST: Right now the federal government spends about four percent of GDP on national defense.

BEE: Natural disaster?

NORQUIST: Okay, your house gets knocked down and the federal government is going to raise your taxes? That makes you better off?

BEE: Beard flu?

NORQUIST: Beard flu, I’m not familiar with that.

BEE: What about the rise of the apes?

NORQUIST: If, there, look, there are legitimate [cut off]

BEE: If the chimps took over would you be comfortable raising taxes?

NORQUIST: We’d prefer that not to happen. But I think raising taxes would not solve that.

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Norquist then explained that he thought up the ATR pledge when he was 12, prompting Bee to ask, “what other impossibly reductive gridlock inducing ideas did you have when you were 12?”

This interview laid quite bare the absurdity of the ATR position, as the organization believes that there is literally no circumstance, even a global calamity, that justifies the need for more federal revenue. And ATR’s stance has brought Norquist into conflict not only with progressives, but with Republicans as well. “I didn’t know I was signing a marriage agreement that would last forever and I think that the majority of members of Congress understand that you have to have additional revenue,” said GOP Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID).

In an effort to head off former Sen. Rick Santorum’s push on manufacturing in the key Super Tuesday state of Ohio, Mitt Romney this morning announced an “Ohio Manufacturers for Romney” coalition. A search of Recovery.gov shows that the corporations of two members of the group received nearly $1.6 million in Recovery Act funds.

Lincoln Electric of Cleveland received a sub-award of $1,125,00 on April 7, 2010 from the Ohio Department of Communications Development for an energy-related project in Euclid, Ohio. RPM International of Medina received two sub-awards in 2010, totaling $458,758 for two U.S. Army projects.

Romney, meanwhile, recently used the occasion of the Recovery Act’s third anniversary to continue attacking the law:

The Congressional Budget Office reported last week that up to 2 million people were employed in December because of the stimulus.  Manufacturing jobs have also grown for the past two years in a row after previously seeing no annual growth at all since 1997.