Ohio papers blast Romney over false auto ad

Mr. Rom­ney, who has changed po­si­tions on too many other is­sues to count, clings to his in­sis­tence that Mr. Obama should not have in­vested tax­payer money in help­ing Chrysler and GM emerge from a man­aged bank­ruptcy. He says he would have been will­ing to pro­vide fed­eral “guar­an­tees” of pri­vate in­vest­ment in the trou­bled auto­makers.

Steven Rat­tner, the Pres­i­dent’s chief ad­viser on the auto bail­out, told The Blade’s ed­i­to­rial page this week that “there was no pri­vate money” on of­fer dur­ing the depths of the Great Re­ces­sion to pre­serve ei­ther car com­pany. He added that Re­pub­li­can Pres­i­dent George W. Bush “un­der­stood that” and launched the bail­out pro­cess as a re­sult.

Mr. Rat­tner noted that the bail­out was po­lit­i­cally un­pop­u­lar at the time, and that there was no guar­an­tee it would work. But he said the GM job cuts cited in the Rom­ney ad oc­curred be­fore the bail­out, and since then the auto sec­tor has been re­spon­si­ble for 20 per­cent of the na­tion’s job growth. With­out it, he added, both auto­makers would have col­lapsed.

Romney first spun his fiction about Chrysler during a campaign stop in Defiance, Ohio: “I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China.”

The story he referenced appeared in Bloomberg News. The story did not reflect what Romney had said.

So, how is the GOP presidential standard bearer responding to the widespread denunciation of his charge against the president? By refusing to withdraw the TV campaign commercial playing in Ohio, and even doubling down — with a radio spot that comes close to repeating the charge, and expanding it to include GM.


It does not seem to matter to Romney that every legitimate news organization that has reported on the story has reached the same conclusion: There is no truth to the claim that Chrysler will be eliminating jobs in Toledo and other plants in the U.S. so as to build Jeeps in China. Nor is there a basis for his saying that GM is cutting jobs in America and creating them in China.

Democracy4Sale wrote: Translation: RMoney is a liar.

Democracy4Sale wrote: Wow...You know, I feel the same way about Benghazi... If I had only known in time.....

Raees wrote: Isn't Ohio one of those states Romney hopes to win?