Mitt Romney finally responds to Bain attacks ... by blaming Obama for destroying the auto industry

Sorry, Mitt: Under President Obama, the auto industry is doing quite well
(Chart: Total auto industry employment. Source: BLS.gov.) My God, Mitt Romney is delusional. I mean, he really is. It's almost getting to the point where Sarah Palin ain't got nothing on him. Check out the latest, via the Washington Post's Philip Rucker:

'The most recent attacks are really off target and I think they know,' Romney said. 'They said, 'Oh, gosh, Governor Romney at Bain Capital closed down a steel factory.' But their problem, of course, is that the steel factory closed down two years after I left Bain Capital. I was no longer there, so that's hardly something which is on my watch.'

Then Romney tried to lay blame for auto job losses on Obama.

'We were able to help create over 100,000 jobs,' Romney said of his tenure at Bain, the venture capital and corporate buyout firm he founded. 'On the president's watch, about 100,000 jobs were lost in the auto industry and auto dealers and auto manufacturers, so he's hardly one to point a finger.'

Romney was talking with a conservative blogger, which explains why he was willing to talk about Bain'he's unwilling to touch the subject with anyone who isn't firmly in his camp. And it's a good thing (for him) that he was talking to an ally, because if he made that comment to any decent reporter (yeah, I know, fat chance), he'd have gotten himself in trouble.

First of all, on Romney's claim that he had left Bain by the time GST Steel went bankrupt, he had "full, sole ownership" of Bain when GST Steel went under. Yes, he was running the Olympics at the time, but Bain was still his company'and it was (and is) where he got his paycheck from. More importantly, he was the CEO of Bain when the company was bought in 1993 and he was CEO of Bain when it was loaded up with debt. Romney was there for all the decisions that led to the bankruptcy.

Second, his claim of creating 100,000 jobs is totally absurd (which explains why he only uses it in front of friendly audiences). Neither Romney nor Bain have ever opened their books to verify anything about the claims made by Romney, but given that he claimed to have created 10,000 jobs in 1994, any sort of defense of the 100,000 number would carry past 1999 ... even though he says he can't be held accountable for anything that happened after 1999. But again, Romney has never explained that number, so there's no way for anyone to assess it's veracity.

Third, Mitt Romney is lying when he says President Obama destroyed 100,000 jobs in the auto industry. In fact, the auto industry as a whole has gained nearly 75,000 jobs since January 2009 and is up by nearly 140,000 jobs since June 2009. Contrast that exploding growth with 255,000 jobs that were lost in the industry in the year before Obama took office'and consider the fact that the industry would have disappeared had Obama not taken action, destroying hundreds of thousands more jobs.

The bottom line is that those numbers show why Mitt Romney tried to claim credit for saving the auto industry last week even though he said he wanted it to go bankrupt. President Obama saved the auto industry and he a took a big political risk in doing so. Unlike Mitt Romney, President Obama had nothing at stake financially. He was just trying to do the right thing.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, put thousands of workers' jobs on the line by loading their companies up with debt and paying himself with borrowed money. Many of those companies survived, but when they failed, it was the workers (and sometimes taxpayers) who paid the price'not Mitt Romney. He still made money. Heads he won, tails they lost. Either way, he came out ahead. Mitt Romney calls that free enterprise, but I think most Americans would call it playing by a different set of rules.