Romney Doubles Down on Auto Industry Lies

October 30, 2012 RSS Feed Print—USNews & World Report, Jefferson Street Blog

 

Mitt Romney has tried to dodge, bob, weave, change the subject, and pretend it didn’t happen when it comes to his position on the automobile companies.

But obfuscation is not enough for Mitt Romney: Now he is resorting to an outright lie in his speeches and in his last minute, desperate advertising. In fact, two big lies.

Lie No. 1: Contrary to Romney’s claim, Detroit and Chrysler are not moving jobs and the making of Jeeps to China. In fact, they are selling Jeeps to China and they are adding $500 million and 1,100 workers to their Ohio Jeep plant. Chrysler smacked down Romney’s lie when he first said it and now Romney is up with an ad repeating the lie, ignoring Chrysler.

Chrysler Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne was forced to send employees an E-mail Tuesday afternoon: “I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China.”

Hello, Mitt? Apologize and take down your TV ad.

Instead, he is buying more air time and putting up radio ads with the same lie.

But it gets worse.

Lie No. 2: This is the one Romney has been repeating over and over about the American auto industry—he would have saved it with his “managed bankruptcy.” I worked for GM; there was no way the auto companies could have survived without Barack Obama’s rescue and with the decision to provide bridge loans and government help. Romney’s plan was not Obama’s plan—as he would try and make you believe. His plan was to get private capital, and as Steve Rattner, who ran the rescue team, and everyone else has stated, there was no private money. Even the conservative Detroit News praised President Obama and referred to Romney’s “wrong-headedness on the auto bailout…he was wrong in suggesting the automakers could have found operating capital in the private markets.”

When Romney called for letting Detroit go bankrupt, he meant it, because his view was the popular one at the time—no more bailouts, no more government money or intervention, enough already. Romney was playing politics. And he knew no one would buy a car from a bankrupt car company, unless the government stepped in to help

Now that the hard decision that President Obama made to provide government loans is popular, Romney is singing a different tune. He is not only trying to give voters the impression that he would have saved Detroit, which is absurd, he is implying that Obama is part of a plot to ship Jeep jobs to China.

Romney will lie and say anything to get elected. Let’s hope the people of Ohio and the United States see through it by next Tuesday.