The pundits say that Hurricane Sandy has temporarily frozen the presidential campaign in place effectively halting the momentum that the Romney Campaign had been building since the first debate.
That may be true.
But Hurricane Sandy has not stopped the lies and false ads emanating from the governor’s campaign.
Romney desperately needs to win Ohio. He can still win without Ohio but the road to victory gets much tougher without the Buckeye state. And as we all know, no republican has ever won the white House without taking Ohio.
Romney’s main impediment in winning the state is the auto bailout. The president supported the bailout. Romney opposed it. One out of every eight jobs in Ohio is related to the auto industry. For those scoring at home…game, set match Obama.
Romney is so desperate to win Ohio that he has made any number of sketchy claims to stem the tide.
He started by trying to take credit for the bailout by saying that the managed bankruptcy was his idea and that the president was simply following his lead. Now everyone, other than those whose sole source of news is FOXNEWS, knows that Romney’s claim is simply a lie.
His next attempt came on the stump. Romney said that he had just read “somewhere” that Jeep was moving its entire production to China. Fact checkers called Romney on the lie noting that Jeep had no intention of moving American operations and jobs overseas. The demand for Jeeps, thanks to the auto bailout has been growing both here and abroad. The demand for Jeeps in China is huge. Jeep plans on opening operations in China and hiring Chinese workers to staff the plant. Jeep is also expanding operations in the US that will generate 1,100 new jobs.
But the Romney Campaign has said publically that they were not going to allow fact checkers to run their campaign. In keeping with that promise; instead of retracting their comments they began running the lie on television ads.
The ads were met by a wave of media criticism. The independent fact checking group, PolitiFact.com gave the ad a “Pants on Fire rating.
Undaunted, the Romney Campaign doubled down. Not only are they still running the Jeep television ads but they began running radio ads which repeated the lie and added that GM plans to double the number of cars built in China.
The message is clear. Obama is so bad for the auto industry that Jeep and GM are shifting American jobs to China.
Finally, a voice of reason can now be heard in response to the Romney lies.
Chrysler Senior Vice President Gualberto Ranieri denied any possibility that US production would be affected writing: “Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China.”
GM spokesman Greg Martin said: “The ad is cynical campaign politics at its worst. We think that creating jobs in the US and repatriating profits back in this country should be a source of bi-partisan pride.” He went on to say that Romney’s ads show that the candidate is “bereft of any fundamental understanding of the global automotive industry…All global manufacturers, whether General Motors, Ford, Chrysler or VW, build historically in the markets in which we sell.”
It should be noted that it is quite extraordinary for the leaders of any industry to refute the statements or ads coming out of any campaign. But Romney’s false statements were unnerving shareholders and raising unfounded questions. Thus, blatant boldfaced lies often require a strong response.
Neither rain nor sleet nor hail nor Hurricane Sandy can stop Mitt Romney from lying to the American people.
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