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.

Watch it:

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.

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.

Some GOP lawmakers in Michigan have been spending their time recently explaining why the man that they’ve backed for President — former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — is all wrong about the federal rescue of the auto industry. “There was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who has endorsed Romney.

Meanwhile, several of Romney’s other endorsers have had to explain their disagreements with him on foreign policy, with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has campaigned with Romney, saying that Romney is wrong about whether the U.S. should be negotiating with the Taliban.

Adding one more issue to the list, as the Las Vegas Sun’s Jon Ralston reported, Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) — who has also endorsed Romney — explained at a town hall this week why Romney is wrong on housing policy:

Mitt Romney and I don’t agree on every issue and certainly housing is one of them. When you look at what is going on here in Southern Nevada, you can’t say you got to let the housing market hit bottom. We have been bouncing along the bottom for years. And the fact is we have to do everything possible to, one, keep people in their homes and, two, get people who are out of their homes back into their homes.

Previously, Heck has said that Romney has a “plan to put Nevada on a path to prosperity once again.” Romney, of course, said that his solution to Nevada’s housing crisis would be to “let it run its course and hit the bottom,” with the government doing nothing to help keep people in their homes. (He later flip-flopped on the issue, calling for the government to step in and force banks to implement mortgage modifications.)

Romney’s initial position on Nevada’s housing crisis earned a rebuke from several of Nevada’s Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Brian Sandoval (R-NV), who said that Romney doesn’t “fully understand” foreclosure prevention.

As a whole, the Republican presidential field is clueless on housing. But one has to wonder how Romney is picking up so many endorsements from people who don’t agree with him on the most pressing issues in their respective states.

As Rick Santorum has risen in the polls in the GOP presidential race, his campaign has been unsuccessful in its attempt to “turn the political conversation away from the social and cultural issues that have dominated his quest for the Republican presidential nomination so far and focus instead on the economy.” The former Pennsylvania senator continues to bring religion into the campaign, saying that President Obama’s theology is not “based on the Bible” and voicing his opposition to prenatal testing.

Last week, Santorum said to voters in Idaho, “Are economics important? You bet? Are jobs important? You bet.” In last night’s GOP presidential debate, Santorum had a chance to show voters that he really did care about the economy. Instead, he failed to even say the word jobs once:

In total, the four GOP contenders mentioned the word “jobs” only 10 times over the span of two hours — and former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) uttered the word a grand total of zero times. [...] Santorum had entered Wednesday night’s debate riding on a wave of support in the polls and among conservative voters in key primary states. His debate performance — during which he struggled to answer questions about his record in Congress — could serve to blunt that momentum heading into next week’s contests in Michigan and Arizona.

Santorum also never mentioned the unemployed, though he did repeat “spending” and “conservative” over and over. According to Gallup, 31 percent of Americans say the economy is the biggest issue facing the U.S. Thirty-one percent say it’s unemployment and jobs.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released his latest tax reform plan today in Arizona and highlighted specifically the fact that it provided a 20-percent across-the-board cut in marginal tax rates for all Americans.

Upon unveiling the plan, Romney claimed that it would actually force the richest Americans to pay their fair share. Speaking of tax exemptions and deductions, Romney said, “For the high-income folks, we’re going to cut back on that, so that we make sure that the top 1 percent keeps paying the current share they’re paying or more.”

But when former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) attacked Romney at the GOP debate tonight, Romney admitted that his tax plan contained a massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans:

SANTORUM: Governor Romney even today suggested today raising taxes on the top 1 percent, adopting the Occupy Wall Street rhetoric. I’m not going to adopt that rhetoric. I’m going to represent 100 percent of Americans. We’re not raising taxes on anyone.

ROMNEY: Number one, I said that we’re going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent. So that’s number one.

Watch it:

According to analysis by Center for American Progress Tax and Budget Policy Director Michael Linden, Romney’s claims that his plan would raise taxes on the rich was false. His later claims, that it would provide a tax break to the rich, are indeed true.

Romney’s plan to give a 20-percent tax cut, lowering rates for the wealthiest Americans from 35 percent to 28 percent, and repeal the alternative minimum tax would, as Romney admitted tonight, provide a huge tax break to the richest Americans, at a cost four times higher than the Bush tax cuts. “The enormity of these tax cuts is mind-boggling,” Linden said. “Even more unbelievable is how skewed they are to those the very top of the income ladder.”

Mitt Romney’s renewed opposition to the rescue that saved the American auto industry, which came in the form of yet another editorial announcing his desire to “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” was immediately slammed by auto industry insiders, reporters who covered the rescue, and even publications that had once taken his same position.

Michigan Rep. Fred Upton (R), who endorsed Romney, has now joined that chorus, telling Western Michigan University’s WMUK radio that turning to the private sector to rescue Detroit as Romney advocated was never an option:

HOST: He wrote an op-ed for the Detroit News in which he said it is good news that U.S. auto companies are back but he questioned the manner in which it was done, the so-called auto bailout. This was a fight that you were knee deep in at the time it was happening. Do you agree with his characterization?

UPTON: I did not see the article that he wrote. I do know that all of the Michigan delegation worked very hard as related to the revival of the auto industry. There was really a choice between bankruptcy and liquidation. There was no one that was willing to come up not only with the cash to keep them afloat but also to serve the warranties of everyone, you and I that drive all these cars. There was no one that could have picked up those pieces other than the federal government.

Later in the interview, Upton disputed Romney’s assertion that the rescue was a President Obama-led bailout of unions, noting that President George W. Bush began the program and that it was “bipartisan from the get-go.” Upton then noted that without the rescue, Michigan “would have hit 40 percent unemployment rates.”

Upton isn’t the only Michigan politician to criticize Romney’s position. Gov. Rick Snyder (R), who also endorsed Romney, told the New York Times last November that the GOP should stop criticizing the auto rescue, saying he wouldn’t “second-guess” it because “the auto industry is doing very well today.” Oddly, both Upton and Snyder have chosen to tout Romney’s economic credentials to Michigan voters while ignoring his factually-challenged opposition to a rescue that saved the state’s largest industry.