The announcement by Chrysler yesterday that it had fully repaid its federal loan was a milestone for the American auto industry. President Obama made the tough decision to issue the loan, and he praised this week's news as a “true testament to the resolve and determination of American workers across the nation.”

That's a sentiment that any reasonable person should celebrate, but for Mitt Romney, it's an opportunity to try to rewrite history.

Yesterday, a Romney spokesman alleged that the President modeled his plan to aid the auto industry after the one supported by Mitt Romney in 2008. The New York Times quotes the spokesman:

Mitt Romney had the idea first. You have to acknowledge that. He was advocating for a course of action that eventually the Obama administration adopted.

However, the facts tell a different story.

In a 2008 New York Times op-ed, titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” Mitt Romney claimed:

If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Then in 2009, Romney asserted that he wanted the federal government to divest  in General Motors, and blamed the Bush and Obama administration for getting involved. Speaking out again in 2009, he penned an op-ed in USA Today claiming, “Government encroachment on free enterprise is depressing investment and job creation.”  

The word you’re looking for is chutzpah.

No amount of spin from his presidential campaign can change the facts. Mitt Romney would have let GM and Chrysler go bankrupt without a dime of federal aid – a decision that would have cost our country more than a million jobs.

Call it what you want: political pandering, poor executive leadership, or revisionist history. No matter how you cut it, today, Mitt Romney’s attempt to take credit for the auto assistance he has opposed for years is absurd.