Good morning from Detroit. I have a new story up about Mitt Romney’s could-be-last-stand here. Watching Romney campaign, there’s something different here from his appearances in Iowa and New Hampshire. Romney is often criticized for telling people what he thinks they want to hear. Then, when people hear him, they think Romney doesn’t really believe what he says, and they don’t vote for him. But in Michigan, when Romney tells people what he thinks they want to hear, he is also saying what he truly believes, because he is talking mostly about his true love, the automobile industry:

Watching Mitt Romney at an auto show is like watching Mike Huckabee in church or John McCain at the Naval Academy: It gives you a look at the man in a setting that is deeply meaningful to him, a setting that helps explain why he has led the life he has led…
“I’ve got cars in my bloodstream,” Romney says a little earlier in the day, in an address to the Detroit Economic Club. When he was a child, he recalls, his biggest thrill of the year was going to the auto show, even though his father, George Romney, made what was hands-down the unsexiest car on the market. “My dad was head of a car company, you know, he made Ramblers,” Romney says. “And we were escorted [to the auto show] with a police escort, motorcycles – awfully cool, even though we had to go in a Rambler”….
So cars aren’t just a hobby for Romney. They are the memories of his young life in Michigan, before he moved to Massachusetts to go to school, achieve his own success in business, become governor, and now run for president. And when Romney heads to the auto show, with 200 of the shiniest cars in the world displayed before him, he’s not just back in Michigan. He’s back in time.

Romney has all sorts of proposals that will make the federal government a virtual partner with Detroit’s ailing auto industry. A lot of what he says here won’t sit well with free-market conservatives. But if Romney is ever able to get over the authenticity issue, it will be here.