In Detroit, Santorum Defends Opposition to Auto Bailout

Mr. Santorum, who is locked in a tight Michigan primary race with Mr. Romney, argued in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club that Mr. Romney was inconsistent for supporting the Wall Street bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, while objecting to billions of dollars in federal loans to the auto industry.

“Governor Romney supported the bailout of Wall Street and decided not to support the bailout of Detroit,” Mr. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, said. “My feeling was that we should not support — the government should not be involved in bailouts, period. I think that’s a much more consistent position.”

In response, the Romney campaign said that Mr. Santorum had once defended a congressman who voted for TARP by saying the congressman’s vote was “the wrong decision, but I don’t think it was an unreasonable decision.”

A new Detroit News poll showed Mr. Santorum leading Mr. Romney by four percentage points in Michigan, which was within the poll’s margin of error. Mr. Romney needs a victory in the Feb. 28 primary to regain momentum after Mr. Santorum unexpectedly swept three contests on Feb. 7.

The battle for Michigan will soon be evident on the airwaves. On Thursday, a “super PAC” supporting Mr. Santorum reserved nearly $700,000 in television time for commercials that are to begin Friday. The group, the Red, White and Blue Fund, is stepping in where Mr. Santorum’s campaign has had a minimal presence, committing only $40,000 to advertising in Michigan.

But that increase in spending will not come close to matching the total number of advertisements supporting Mr. Romney. His campaign has reserved more than $800,000 in airtime, and the pro-Romney super PAC has spent more than $650,000 on television commercials in the state.

Both candidates, recognizing the political power of labor unions here, sought on Thursday to tone down some of their anti-union comments. Mr. Romney said during a visit to Monroe that unions play an “important role,” but defended so-called right-to-work laws. Mr. Santorum said during his address here that private-sector unions were a “legitimate” part of the economy.

But Mr. Santorum drew a distinction with public-employee unions, which he said had an unfair advantage because they bargain not with business owners representing shareholder interests, but with politicians trawling for votes and handling taxpayer money. “I have no problem with private-sector unions,” he said, adding, “I don’t feel quite as warm and fuzzy about public-sector unions.”

If either man wins the Republican nomination, his opposition to the auto industry bailout will be seen as a hurdle to winning Michigan, a critical swing state, in the general election. The auto bailout, which was begun during the Bush administration and continued by President Obama, is now widely seen as successful, and as if to emphasize that point to the candidates, General Motors on Thursday reported a quarterly profit of $472 million.

Mr. Santorum and Mr. Romney both say they favored a managed bankruptcy — which ultimately happened — but without the government loans. They argue that such a process would have allowed the companies to emerge at least as healthy, if not healthier, as they did from the bailout.

But many industry analysts say that the huge amounts of money required to save the companies was available only through the government; banks and other private sources of capital were too weakened by the economic crisis to provide loans on anywhere near the scale needed.

“These companies were hemorrhaging cash on a daily basis into the millions and millions of dollars; credit was not easily accessible from almost any of the markets, and so I don’t know that they would have survived,” said Gary Corbin, managing director of business development in Michigan for Accenture, the consulting firm. For every job lost at one of the big car companies, he said, 6 to 10 other jobs would have also been lost across the United States in a ripple effect.

“It was a huge catastrophe just about to happen,” he said.

In his speech, Mr. Santorum laid most of the blame for the bailouts not with Mr. Obama but with George W. Bush, a rare departure from the Republican candidates’ nonstop assault on Mr. Obama’s policies.

“President Obama was just following suit,” he said. “President Bush set the precedent, and it was the wrong precedent.”

Mr. Santorum also said that he favored income inequality because some people contribute more to society than others. While also emphasizing that he favors “equality of opportunity,” he added: “There is income inequality in America. There always has been and hopefully, and I do say that, there always will be. Why? Because people rise to different levels of success based on what they contribute to society and to the marketplace, and that’s as it should be.”

He also made light of the release on Wednesday night of his recent income tax returns, noting that he had paid roughly double the effective tax rate of Mr. Romney, who made far more money.

“Look, I do my own taxes,” Mr. Santorum said. “Heck, Romney paid half the tax rate I did, so obviously he doesn’t do his own taxes. Maybe I should hire an accountant in the future.”

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting from New York, and Ashley Parker from Monroe, Mich.

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