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In January of 2008, Michigan was the state that nearly rescued Mitt Romney's first presidential campaign.

The former Massachusetts governor had just come off a pair of demoralizing second-place showings in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary when his campaign plane touched down in Grand Rapids on Jan. 9. "I will win Michigan," he told reporters on that day.

Romney went on to do just that with the help of a weeklong assault on Sen. John McCain's patented "straight talk," in which the Arizona senator told Michiganders that not all of the jobs that had been lost in the state's automobile industry were going to come back.

By contrast, Romney trumpeted his unabashedly buoyant visions of the state's principal industry and vowed that he would design a plan to revitalize it within his first 100 days in office.

Wherever Romney went that week in Michigan -- the state where he was born and raised and where his father, George, was fondly remembered for his six years as governor and eight years as chairman of American Motors -- he was greeted by some of the largest and most enthusiastic crowds of his candidacy.

Romney's hometown credentials and positive message on the auto industry resonated with voters, who handed him a nine-point victory over McCain. "Tonight is a victory of optimism over Washington-style pessimism," Romney said in his first major victory speech of the 2008 primary season, which would also turn out to be his last.

But Romney's image in the state was perhaps irrevocably altered in November of that year, when he penned an op-ed in the New York Times, provocatively titled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."

In it, Romney argued that bailing out the major U.S. automobile companies would result ultimately in the industry's demise, while federal nonintervention would force automakers to restructure and thus save themselves.

"Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check," Romney wrote. "In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check."

Despite such a tough-love stance, Romney appears intent on again winning the Michigan primary -- the 2012 date of which has not yet been set.