Bailout Politics Shape Michigan Primary

Bailed-out General Motors announced its largest profits ever and record $7,000 profit-sharing checks for largely union, blue collar workers, Thursday.

How will that affect the Republican candidates who have been against the bailout, and are trying to reach out to those Michigan workers?

The conventional wisdom earlier this week was that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's anti-bailout stand was going to be a problem for him, since he is from Michigan, and the son of former Michigan Governor and car executive George Romney.

Rick Santorum has also spoken out against bailouts.

But a poll out Thursday from the Detroit News  shows that half of the Republican primary voters in Michigan say both Rick Santorum and  Mitt Romney's anti-bailout talk won't affect their vote in Michigan's Feb. 28 primary.

Santorum's Lead In Polls

The Detroit News poll puts Rick Santorum 4 points ahead of Michigan native Mitt Romney, with 12 percent of voters still undecided.

Santorum has blasted Romney for a 2008 op-ed piece Romney wrote titled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

But Nolan Finley, editorial page editor of the Detroit News, says that Republicans will come to realize that socially-conservative Santorum is a candidate with limited popular appeal.