WASHINGTON – Former Gov. Jennifer Granholm and a pair of Democratic congressmen from Michigan today criticized Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for an editiorial piece he wrote about the government rescue of General Motors and Chrysler. The three Democrats accusing him of turning on his home state in order to score political points.

With the Michigan primary looming in two weeks, Romney wrote anop-ed in the Detroit News citing ties to the city in which he was born but arguing that Democratic President Barack Obama botched the rescue of the iconic companies by giving the UAW a share of them.

“Instead of doing the right thing and standing up to union bosses, Obama rewarded them,” wrote Romney, who in November 2008 argued in a New York Times editorial to put the companies through a “managed bankruptcy” that would save them.

While that eventually happened, Romney said in Tuesday’s op-ed Obama still overcommitted taxpayer funding to protect the companies and protected the UAW from deeper cuts to the detriment of creditors who would have been first in line for compensation in a normal bankruptcy.

U.S. Rep. Sander Levin (D-Royal Oak) said during a conference call in response to the op-ed that the Romney proposal never would have worked because credit markets were so frozen at the time that there was no private financing to see the companies through their bankruptcies and both would have been liquidated without government money.

“The government had to supply the funds,” he said.

U.S. Rep, John Dingell (D-Dearborn) said Romney is trying to take credit for the idea that saved the two companies – structured bankruptcy — “after President Obama and the Democrats have done this.”

“Mr. Romney changes his position almost as often as he changes his underwear,” Dingell said. He added. “He’s looking a bit desperate.”

Granholm – who was initially an opponent of bankruptcy – said it hurts all the more because Romney is from Michigan and “turned his back on Michigan” by proposing a political solution that would have destroyed his hometown industry.

“I’d say he stabbed us in the back in our darkest hour,” she said.

Read this at the Detroit Free Press