[media-credit name=’JAKE NAUGHTON/Herald photo’ align=’alignright’ width=’336′][/media-credit]JANESVILLE, Wis. ? Presidential candidate Barack Obama blamed President Bush for the economic downturn Wednesday at campaign stops that included a speech to autoworkers considering a buyout offer.

Obama used a stop at a General Motors Corp. assembly plant in Janesville to flesh out his economic development initiatives ? and take swipes at the Bush administration.

“We are not standing on the brink of recession due to forces beyond our control,” Obama said. “The fallout from the housing crisis that’s cost jobs and wiped out savings was not an inevitable part of the business cycle. It was a failure of leadership and imagination in Washington.”

He spoke the day after GM reported the largest annual loss ever for an American automaker ? $38.7 billion in 2007. The company has offered buyouts to 74,000 U.S. hourly workers, and union leaders said they expect hundreds in Janesville to accept.

Obama got a warm reception ? and several standing ovations ? for an economic plan that he said would address the nation’s housing crisis, help middle-class families struggling to make ends meet and keep jobs in the U.S.

Autoworker Jim Conley, 57, of Janesville, said he heard a lot from Obama that he had not heard him say before and particularly liked proposals to stop taxing Social Security income and stop giving tax cuts to businesses that send jobs overseas.

Conley said if he had to vote today, he would vote for Obama.

“He’s closer to a blue-collar worker than Hillary is,” he said.

Obama had three campaign stops in Wisconsin on Wednesday, while Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee planned an evening rally in Pewaukee.

Both Obama and his opponent, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, launched television ads, and her campaign announced the opening of offices in Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay and La Crosse.

Clinton has no campaign appearances planned in Wisconsin until Saturday, but her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is scheduled to speak in Milwaukee, Waukesha, Madison and La Crosse on Thursday.

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Huckabee ralls Lambeau moment

Mike Huckabee scored a touchdown with Wisconsin voters Wednesday night with an anecdote about Lambeau Field that had some supporters in stitches.

The former Arkansas governor said he was campaigning for President Bush before the 2004 election with two other governors when they met a security guard for Lambeau, the home of the Green Bay Packers.

Huckabee said the guard offered to give them a private tour of the stadium late that night. And Huckabee said he told the guard to invite the trio of chief executives to sing the national anthem.

“We went down on the 50-yard line in a darkened Lambeau Field stadium and there we stood a little after 11 p.m. that night and sang our lungs out the national anthem,” he said. “When we finished, I said, ‘When you go back home, you can tell everybody you were invited to sing the national anthem at Lambeau Field’.”

Huckabee said his experience means he’d never make the fatal mistake that Democrat John Kerry made before the 2004 election: referring to Lambeau Field as “Lambert.”