GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is in the state of his birth this week — and receiving an icy reception. Michigan is home to General Motors and Chrysler, two U.S. companies for which the 2009 auto rescue “was seen as a matter of life or death by both parties.” Romney, however, opted for death when the Motor City native penned a op-ed entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” and slammed the rescue as “tragic.” This supposed tragedy, however, allowed Chrysler and GM to restructure and repay over $60 billion in taxpayer loans and add about 50,000 jobs nationwide.

As is his nature, Romney quickly switched positions in light of the rescue’s success and actually claimed last month that he “had the idea first.” However, Michiganders are not buying it. Rep. John Dingell (D) said yesterday that he hopes Romney “has answers for Michigan’s working families he abandoned two years ago” and “threw them under the bus.” Former Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm offered a pithier take in her own op-ed titled, “Let Mitt Romney Go Bankrupt.” Now, even Michigan Republican Rep. Thaddeus McCotter is wiping his hands of Romney. McCotter, who “supported the government intervention for General Motors and Chrysler,” sent “a Michigan message to Mitt” on his auto failure:

“Motor City hospitality dictates a Michigan message to Mitt that our struggling families, entrepreneurs and workers think Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama are not rivals, they’re running mates,” McCotter, who is considering his own run for the White House, said in a statement.

Watch video of his remarks:

Of course, President Obama actually delivered the auto rescue McCotter asked for. Conversely, auto industry officials say Romney’s rejection of that rescue “would have led to liquidation and the loss of more than one million jobs nationwide.” McCotter’s argument that Obama and Romney are similar when it comes to their health care plans and beliefs that global warming is a real problem, however, is much more accurate.

Whatever his current positions may be, it’s clear that Romney’s failure to back the auto rescue when it was most needed and his general “anti-auto sentiments” may prompt Michiganders to kick him to the curb. As Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer noted, “I don’t think we’ve seen a less inviting homecoming since LeBron (James) went back to Cleveland.”

During his State of the Union Address, President Obama focused on how the United States can “win the future.” The “first step,” he declared, “is encouraging American innovation.”

One of the leading Republicans in Congress, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), appeared on the G. Gordon Liddy Show yesterday and discussed this notion of an “innovation economy.” After Liddy peddled the ludicrous claim that House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) had implemented a ban on incandescent light bulbs in the United States, McCotter used the opportunity to scoff at liberal efforts to improve the incandescent light bulb, a product that was first invented over 200 years ago. He called the irony “striking” that liberals would “prais[e] the end of the incandescent bulb at the very time they’re talking about an innovation economy”:

LIDDY: Is there any chance that you fellas can talk to [House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred] Upton and get our light bulbs back, for heaven’s sake?

McCOTTER: Yes, yes. I saw that some on the left were praising the end of the incandescent bulb, at the very time they’re talking about an innovation economy. The irony is striking. One of the greatest innovations in American history was the incandescent bulb and I think we got to put it back where people can use them again.

Listen here:

The smaller point here is that, as Brad Johnson of ThinkProgress writes, “there was, in fact, no bill to ban incandescent light bulbs,” despite Liddy’s insistence to the contrary.

The larger point, however, is that McCotter’s idea of “innovation” in the 21st century is holding on to a 19th-century product with an iron grip. McCotter is undoubtedly correct that the incandescent bulb was “one of the greatest innovations in American history.” But the entire premise of innovation is that we keep improving instead of resting on our laurels. That’s precisely what is happening with modern upgrades to the incandescent light bulb. The New York Times reported last year that “the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation.”

McCotter’s insistence that America’s best light bulb innovations came in the 19th century is troubling enough. It’s unclear if McCotter would also prefer the country revert back to typewriters and telegraphs.

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) essentially accused his own party leadership of hypocrisy yesterday for resisting the elimination of a federally-funded group that McCotter leads, but believes is superfluous. McCotter chairs the House Republican Policy Committee, but argues that its purpose has been absorbed by other Republican leadership offices. He wants to disband the committee and use its $360,000 a year budget to pay down the debt. But Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and others in the GOP leadership have objected.

In a rare “public reflection of a behind-the-scenes battle,” McCotter slammed Cantor on Fox News yesterday, saying he is “absolutely mistaken” and that his position is an example of “the status quo in Washington”:

MCCOTTER: Well I hope it would happen, I think it’s the first step to showing we’re about deeds not words. … How can anybody in the Congressional Republican Caucus in the House come around and talk about making difficult choices in spending for real people if they’re aren’t willing to start with themselves? [...]

HOST: Well not all Republicans on board either. [...]

MCCOTTER: Well, I think Eric’s absolutely mistaken in that assumption. This is all we’ve ever heard out of the status quo in Washington. The reality is all of this can be done through the existing House standing committees. … We spend over a million on the whip’s office; we spend millions on the leader’s office. We can make a small, significant step to return it.

And as for the whip, I would encourage him, especially when he’s got his ‘YouCut’ program up there, to turn it into ‘WeCut’ first.

Watch it:

McCotter denied that the battle reflects a larger rift in the House GOP, but added, “I think it’s an opportunity to just show the people who are relying on us to have learned our lesson to see that we actually have started to prove it.”

Last week on the House floor, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) attacked President Obama the day he signed the Affordable Care Act into law. “So this is what change looks like?” McCotter asked. “President Obama’s campaign mantra of hope and change has degenerated into tax and hate.” In a new interview with Real Clear Politics, McCotter explains that he made the claim because he’s upset that the President is taking on Wall Street and the insurance companies:

RCP: On Tuesday you said some things on the House floor that I want to ask you to defend. The first is your statement that “Obama’s campaign mantra of hope and change has degenerated into tax and hate.”

McCOTTER: Yeah. Look at how he demonizes oppositions, look what he’s done to insurance companies, look what he does to Wall Street, look at the end result. It’s to impose a tax, it’s to get his agenda passed. That’s things that Bush was accused of and I think it’s quite manifest in what he’s been doing to try to get his agenda through.

At least McCotter is staying consistent with the GOP line in siding with big business. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) urged bankers to stand up against “little punk staffers” on Capitol Hill trying to implement new Wall Street regulations. And Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) recently railed against new regulation, saying banks’ profits “trump[] the consumer finance whatever” — a reference to the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. However, it seems that the GOP is out of step with Americans on these issues, as large majorities said in recent polls that they have an unfavorable view of Wall Street and “believe Congress and the President need to reform our financial system now.”

Last night on Fox News’ Red Eye, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) explained to host Greg Gutfeld why he does not believe that human activity is causing global warming. McCotter, who is the chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee, a GOP group charged with helping Republican lawmakers come up with legislative ideas, has used his global warming denials as a pretense for fighting to block cap-and-trade proposals.

Environmental groups have declared that McCotter is a “Caveman Congressman.” The satirical Caveman Energy Caucus website notes that lawmakers like McCotter have “chosen OLD energy when they voted no” on Waxman-Markey clean energy legislation. Ironically, as he explained his backwards denial of settled climate change science, McCotter cited the experience of his cavemen namesake to note that the melting of glaciers had a positive effect:

MCCOTTER: Remember, the people who talk about the melting of the glaciers and others, imagine if you were in a peninsula around 1,000 BC or so or earlier and your name was Tor and you’re out huntin’ mastodon. And you didn’t notice that the glaciers were melting and leaving the devastating flooding in its wake that became the Great Lakes in the state of Michigan.

So I think what we have to do is go back in history and look at this and realize that the Earth has been here a long time and they’ve selected periods of time and say somehow this proves there’s a manmade global warming occurring is absolutely wrong. We have to look at the different periods of history, we have to look at the different effects, and then we have to have direct empirical data to correlate between man’s activity and the effect on the planet, and that is yet to be proven and highly doubt that it’s going to be any time soon.

Watch it:

McCotter is wrong on several fronts. First, the glacial melt which formed the Great Lakes occurred between a period of 15,000 and 10,000 BC, not 1,000 BC, as McCotter claims. But we do not have to look to the past to see shrinking glaciers. Global warming is currently melting 18,000 Himalayan glaciers — the largest concentration of glaciers outside the great polar ice sheets. The global trend of melting glaciers has only accelerated, with 2009 marked as the 18th consecutive year glaciers around the world have decreased in size.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has conclusively shown that carbon emissions, caused chiefly by the burning of fossil fuels, are the largest contributor to global warming. If McCotter is interested in what sets this “period in history” apart, he should know that every single year of this century (2001-2008) has been among the top ten warmest years since instrumental records began.