General Motors recently announced that, thanks to federal efforts to keep the American auto industry from going under, it would be able to rehire 483 workers at its Spring Hill, Tennessee plant to manufacture “three variants of Ecotec four-cylinder engines.” The $438 million arrangement will start producing engines for the Buick, Chevrolet, and GMC models by 2011.

As auto blog Jalopnik reports, the plant recently held a ceremony to welcome back the new workers to begin production of the Ecotec engines. Attending the ceremony were three local Republican legislators, Sens. Bob Corker, Lamar Alexander, and Rep. Marsha Blackburn. Ironically, all three of these lawmakers opposed the plans to save General Motors and other U.S. auto companies. This didn’t stop Corker from taking credit for the federal rescue, anyway. At the event he claimed he “contributed to strengthening the auto industry in this country.” Jalopnik reports that “irony of the Republican lawmakers’ presence wasn’t lost on the workers who attended the ceremony; they booed Tennessee Republican Bob Corker”:

Happy days came back Friday to Spring Hill, Tenn., when General Motors announced it would rehire 483 laid-off workers to build four-cylinder engines. On hand to cheer the news: Three Republican lawmakers who opposed the bailout that saved GM.

As part of its $50 billion bankruptcy arranged by the Obama administration, GM shuttered the Spring Hill plant’s assembly line last year, shedding 2,000 jobs in the process, but kept building four-cylinder engines. The new plan calls for $483 million in spending to upgrade the engine line, pending a deal on state incentives.

The irony of the Republican lawmakers’ presence wasn’t lost on the workers who attended the ceremony; they booed Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, and one UAW official made clear from the stage that the union still remembered which politicians had voted to rescue Wall Street but opposed an auto industry bailout.

Jalopnik goes on to note that when the auto industry rescue was being negotiated, Corker was speaking very differently about federal efforts to revive GM. At the time, Corker said that the Obama administration “has decided they know better than our courts and our free market process how to deal with these companies. … This is a major power grab.”

One of the driving forces behind the Tea Party movement is its opposition to the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which Congress passed at the height of the financial crisis and President Bush signed into law in October 2008. In fact, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which heads the Tea Party Express, lists one of its overarching principles as “opposition to bailouts.” They deride bailouts as “dangerous,” “quasi-socialism,” and “immoral.”

Bank of America has received $45 billion from the federal government, making it one of the largest recipients of TARP money. It is no surprise that the Tea Party Express has derided companies that took bailout money, even singling out Bank of America by name at a Pennsylvania rally last year. What is surprising is that for all its anti-TARP vitriol, the Tea Party Express holds all its funding in the bailed-out bank.

According to FEC records, the Tea Party Express’s parent organization, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, keeps its funds exclusively in a Bank of America branch in Corona, CA. Lest you think Bank of America was their only option in the area, a rudimentary Google Map search found over a half-dozen other banks in Corona alone that have not received TARP money. If the Tea Party Express truly believes that bailouts are dangerous and immoral, why is the group putting millions of dollars into a bailed-out bank?

Newt Gingrich recently sat down with fivethirtyeight.com for an interview promoting his new book To Save America in which he argues that America is being taken over by a “secular socialist machine.” Fivethirtyeight’s Tom Schaller asked about the 2008 bank bailouts, noting that some have called it a form of “corporate socialism.” In response, Gingrich attacked the Bush bailout and then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for implementing it:

GINGRICH: I feel very strongly about that. I said at that time that I thought Henry Paulson should not have been Treasury Secretary. I thought it was totally wrong for the former chairman of Goldman Sachs to be funneling billions of dollars from the taxpayers to Goldman Sachs. And I have said over and over, you can’t have capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down because you get socialism both ways.

Later in the interview, Schaller asked Gingrich what he thinks of President Bush, “under whom the first $3 trillion budget and first $1 trillion deficit was passed.” This time, Gingrich had some very different things to say about the bailouts. The former Speaker defended Bush’s tenure, adding that he had no choice but to push taxpayer money on the nation’s largest banks:

GINGRICH: I think that he was very sincere in his desire to protect America. I think he was very sincere in his basic conservative social values. I think he began his Administration with a real commitment on lower taxes and more economic growth, precisely in the Reagan model. And I think that late in his Administration that he was frankly worn down by the bureaucracies in Washington. [...]

And then I think when the crisis hit in the fall of 2008 everybody panicked. Candidly, there was a period there when you had the Federal Reserve chairman and the Secretary of the Treasury saying, “If we don’t do X, Y and Z, the entire world economy is going to collapse.” That’s pretty good grounds for stopping and trying to do something. It’s easy for people to say, “Well, I’d rather have risked a world depression.” But most of the people I talked to in the private sector at the time were really worried about the system freezing up totally.

So in the very same interview, Gingrich attacks the bailouts to play to the anti-government Tea Party crowd, but later justifies them to defend Bush.

But at least Gingrich is consistent on one thing: being inconsistent about his position on the bailouts. When Congress was debating the bailout legislation, he first urged the GOP “in the strongest language possible” to vote against it, but later that day, he said he was “trying to help get it through.” A month later, he urged Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — who was running for president at the time — to distance himself from it.

Since health care reform became law, there has been a split amongst conservatives and Republicans over whether to campaign for a full or partial repeal of the bill. Some Republicans who initially called for full repeal, like Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), are now walking away from such a radical position. On Fred Thompson’s radio show Thursday, Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) tried to walk a fine line when guest host Dom Giordano questioned him about “the backsliding among some Republicans.” After calling for the repeal of only “the egregious aspects of the health care bill,” Price said he wanted to push for full repeal of the stimulus and the TARP program:

GIORDANO: And then I look at Republicans saying that they may not nationwide, this is the leadership now, Mitch McConnell and others, use the repeal the bill thing, which I think all conservatives that I know of, that’s the mantra, that’s the battle cry, going into this. That’s what worries some of us about the backsliding among some Republicans.

PRICE: Well, listen, let me give you some optimism and hope. The conservative Republican majority that will be in the House of Representatives, I believe, after the November 2010 election will be a different kind of Republican. The majority of the Republican conference will be, have served three terms or fewer. It’s a different kind of Republican, it will be a new style of leadership that will demand a decrease in spending. Demand truly smaller government. Demand individual responsibility. Demand that we get within our means and also harken back to those wonderful American fundamental principles that have made us the greatest nation in the history of the world. Look, we’re not only interested in repealing the egregious aspects of the health care bill, we’re interested in repealing the money from TARP. We’re interested in repealing the non-stimulus bill. We’re interested in repealing the bailout philosophy that continues to move us in a direction that makes us all subjects of the federal government as opposed to that wonderful American liberty and freedom that we all cherish.

Listen here:

Price, who first said that the GOP would run on a policy of repeal in Sept. 2009, did not explain how he would repeal the stimulus and TARP money that has already been doled out, including the $134,148,933 that has been sent to Price’s district as of Dec. 31, 2009.

Facing a primary challenge from former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been “moving starkly — and often awkwardly — to the right,” even abandoning some his past positions like support for cap-and-trade. In an interview with the Editorial Board of the Arizona Republic on Thursday, McCain tried to distance himself from the bank bailout he supported in the fall of 2008, claiming that then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke misled him on the TARP plan.

In the same interview, McCain reportedly claimed that he suspended his campaign to return to Washington, D.C. only at the request of President Bush:

In his new book “On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System,” Paulson belittles McCain’s contribution to the response, noting that “when it came right down to it, (McCain) had little to say in the forum he himself had called.” He also called McCain’s decision to return to Washington, apparently without a plan, “impulsive and risky” and even “dangerous.”

McCain said Bush called him in off the campaign trail, saying a worldwide economic catastrophe was imminent and that he needed his help. “I don’t know of any American, when the president of the United States calls you and tells you something like that, who wouldn’t respond,” McCain said. “And I came back and tried to sit down and work with Republicans and say, ‘What can we do?’”

McCain’s telling of the decision to suspend his campaign and attend a bipartisan meeting at the White House doesn’t match with several descriptions of the decision. In their book Game Change, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann report that McCain asked Bush to call the White House meeting after deciding to suspend his campaign:

– McCain set off back to the Hilton. In the car he called Bush and informed him of his decision, and asked if the president would host a meeting at the White House for him, Obama, and congressional leaders to discuss the bailout bill. Bush feared such a meeting would inject a destabilizing does of politics into a fragile situation. He told McCain that his intercession would undercut Paulson and wasn’t likely to help solve the problem. After hanging up, Bush instructed his aides, [f]ind out what’s going on here. But before they had a chance, McCain was on TV, standing at a lectern at the Hilton, announcing the suspension and calling on Bush to convene a conclave. (Game Change, p. 384)

– By the late afternoon, McCain finally got some good news. Bush had agreed to host the meeting. The president called Obama to extend an invitation for the following day. Obama sensed reluctance in Bush’s voice, but, like the president, he felt he had no real choice but to accede to McCain’s wishes. (Game Change, p. 385)

– Bush was dumbfounded by McCain’s behavior. He’d forced Bush to hold a meeting that the president saw as pointless — then sat there like a bump on a log. Unconstructive, thought Bush. Unclear. Ineffectual. (Game Change, p. 389)

Indeed, as the Arizona Republic’s Dan Nowicki notes, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson also makes clear in his memoir that McCain called the meeting:

But McCain demurred. “I’ll wait my turn,” he said. It was an incredible moment, in every sense. This was supposed to be McCain’s meeting—he’d called it, not the president, who had simply accommodated the Republican candidate’s wishes. Now it looked as if McCain had no plan at all—his idea had been to suspend his campaign and summon us all to this meeting. It was not a strategy, it was a political gambit, and the Democrats had matched it with one of their own.

McCain’s attempt to shift responsibility to President Bush is ironic considering that he coined the acronym “BIOB” (Blame It On Bush).

Appearing at an American Spectator Newsmaker Breakfast this morning, California Senate candidate and former McCain campaign adviser Carly Fiorina said that she “probably would have voted for” Justice Sonia Sotomayor because “she seemed qualified.” Asked if she thought former Alaska governor Sarah Palin would back her campaign, Fiorina said she had “no idea,” but that she shares “Sarah Palin’s values.”

Later in her chat, Fiorina demonstrated one of the values that she shares with Palin, which is flip-flopping on last fall’s bank bailout. Fiorina told the reporters at the Spectator breakfast that she opposed bailouts:

Fiorina said that she was opposed to bailouts and President Obama’s economic stimulus package. Instead, she said, she supports low taxes and spending, and described the nation’s debt as “unsustainable.”

But in 2008, Fiorina defended the bailout, calling it “necessary”:

– FIORINA: And, finally, if you cannot get a loan for anything that you need to do, keep your small business running — in other words, the bank bailout was, unfortunately, necessary because credit is tight for hardworking Americans and small businesses. And John McCain has very specific proposals to help them get through this. [Fox News, 10/14/08]

– FIORINA: I think there are many people who are uncomfortable with the government bailout. And I think many people, including Senator McCain, supported that a bailout for the very simple reason, and only one reason, and that is credit was being cut off to small businesses, to companies, and to families in America.

So something had to be done to loosen the credit freeze. And, in fact, it appears to be working thus far. While the stock market plummeted today on fears of an economic slowdown or recession, fundamentally, we can see the credit is loosening. That is a bit of good news. [Fox News, 10/22/08]

Palin and Fiorina aren’t the only conservatives whose “values” have changed regarding the bailout. Both Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck supported the financial rescue, but now rail against it.

Today on his Fox News show, Glenn Beck tried to show that his criticism is principled and bipartisan. He said that while President Bush did have czars, they weren’t “crazy people” — like President Obama’s appointees. To show that he doesn’t see political party, he pointed to his dislike of Bush’s $700 billion bailout:

He [Obama] will say that Bush started us down the path toward socialism, and he’d be right by that. Bush started the crazy spending. He would be right again. Bush started the bailouts. Yes, he did — hated him for it.

Watch it:

While Beck did come to have reservations about Bush’s bailout (because it allowed the Treasury Secretary to “expand this in any direction he feels is necessary”), he actually initially supported it. What he said on Sept. 22, 2008:

But these are anything but normal times. I thought about it an awful lot this weekend, and while it takes everything in me to say this, I think the bailout is the right thing do.

The “REAL STORY” is the $700 billion that you’re hearing about now is not only, I believe, necessary, it is also not nearly enough, and all of the weasels in Washington know it.

In that same segment, Beck called Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson “immortal.”

Much of Fox News host Glenn Beck’s appeal is his populist, anti-government rhetoric, which gained extra traction during the federal government’s financial bailouts. “Wall Street owns our government,” Beck declared in July. “Our government and these gigantic corporations have merged.” A couple of weeks later, he “mockingly replaced the stars on the American flag with the logos of corporate giants like G.E., General Motors, Wal-Mart and Citigroup.” But the blog Another War of Jenkins’ Ear points out that Beck — while appearing on CNN Headline News — actually voiced his support for President Bush’s $700 billion bailout:

But these are anything but normal times. I thought about it an awful lot this weekend, and while it takes everything in me to say this, I think the bailout is the right thing do.

The “REAL STORY” is the $700 billion that you’re hearing about now is not only, I believe, necessary, it is also not nearly enough, and all of the weasels in Washington know it.