The American Spectator

Jed Babbin calls Romney's key to victory in Michigan "a Khrushchev-style five year plan for Detroit." (Full disclosure: Jed Babbin is my editor at Human Events and the Editors there have endorsed Thompson.) AP is more brutal and more serious: "The Arizona senator had the temerity to tell voters that a candidate who says traditional auto manufacturing jobs 'are coming back is either naive or is not talking straight with the people of Michigan and America.'...[Romney] told voters what he thought they wanted to hear. 'I'm not open to a bailout, but I am open to a workout,' Romney said of the auto industry, even as he vowed to spend $20 billion over five years for research on energy, fuels, automotive technology and material sciences. How many Michigan voters mistook that for a multibillion-dollar bailout pledge? Romney also said he wanted to modify a recently passed measure calling for U.S. vehicle fleets to average 35 miles per gallon by 2020. Well, baloney. Less than three years ago, Romney seemed to champion higher automobile standards. 'Almost everything in America has gotten more efficient in the last decade, except the fuel economy of the vehicles we drive,' he said in September 2005." Will anyone remember in a few days? We'll find out if his rivals want to make sure fiscal conservatives don't forget.