Yet another opportunity for Southern senators to apologize to Mich.

The news of the day is that General Motors posted record profits last year, just two years after many in Congress were ready to let the company die.

Once again the No. 1 automaker in the world, GM said Thursday it earned $7.6 billion last year, a 66 percent gain over the prior year.

The record earnings represent “a remarkable turnaround,” according to auto industry analysts. In Michigan and Macomb County we’re proud of this remarkable display of ingenuity, and we know that the upcoming $7,000 profit-sharing checks for GM workers will further boost our economy.

So, where is the apology from those Southern senators, like Richard Shelby of Alabama and Bob Corker of Tennessee?

Senators, this seems like an opportune time to admit that you were horribly wrong when you said that giving rescue loans to GM and Chrysler (which is also flourishing) would be like pouring money down a rat hole.

This is the perfect moment for you to concede that you let your rigid, partisan ideology get in the way of a pragmatic, short-term solution to the auto industry’s woes.

This would be a good point in time to admit that you almost prevailed in committing one of the biggest, most tragic mistakes in congressional history.

If you apologize, those of us here in Michigan will stop calling you unpatriotic.

We will no longer mention that you were attempting to bolster foreign car companies in your home states at the expense of more than 1 million American workers across the nation.

And I will stop referring to you as the Dixie Dumbbells.

Admitting you were wildly off the mark is clearly the right thing to do now that the rescue package and fast-track bankruptcy process is a spectacular success – kind of like those new GM and Chrysler models that are packing ‘em in at dealerships.

I hope you now see that you would have devastated my home state – and turned my county into some backwoods locality where people are trapped in poverty – just because … well, because what?

As Mitt Romney (who also owes us an apology, not a campaign sales pitch) would say: “This is personal.”