Daniel Larison catches Mitt Romney trying to have it both ways on the $700 billion bank bailout: Romney says he was for Henry Paulson’s good TARP but he’s against Tim Geithner’s bad TARP. Conveniently, this allows Romney to position himself as effectively anti-TARP under Obama while he was a supporter under Bush.

Larison correctly argues, “One can either recognize that the original TARP was always potentially an opaque slush fund to be used for whatever purpose the executive branch wanted, and it was therefore an outrageous measure that ought to have been defeated, or one can accept the abuses of the TARP that inevitably followed from the absurd way it was designed.” He continues, “Supporters of a policy or piece of legislation do not get to receive credit for the supposed benefits and avoid blame for the negative consequences.”

Well, if the policy or legislation in question is either Romneycare or TARP, apparently you do.