“Yes, Romney’s A Liar”: But More Than Just Creepy, This Is Getting Ridiculous
It is no secret that political candidates are capable of doing awful things when they are reach the desperate final days of an election campaign.
But trying to scare American workers into believing that a government initiative that saved their industry was some sort of secret scheme to shutter major plants and offshore jobs is more than just creepy. It’s economic fear-mongering of a sort that is destructive to the spirit of communities and to the very future of the republic as an industrial force.
George Romney, who led the remarkable American Motors Company project that would eventually produce the Jeep, never in a political career that saw him win election as governor of Michigan and seek the Republican nomination for president would have engaged in such calumny.
But George Romney’s ne’re-do-well son, a very different sort of businessman who devoted his career to taking apart American companies and offshoring jobs, is trying to resurrect his presidential candidacy with a big lie.
And the lie is about Jeeps.
Jeeps are made in Toledo, Ohio, where the iconic American vehicle has been produced since 1941, and Romney needs to win Toledo and the rest of northwest Ohio if he is to stand a chance of winning the battleground state that is key to the presidency.
Last week, Romney went to the region and shocked voters by suggesting that: “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, an October 22 report by Bloomberg News, which specifically stated that: “Chrysler currently builds all Jeep SUV models at plants in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. [Fiat/Chrysler executive Mike] Manley referred to adding Jeep production sites rather than shifting output from North America to China.”
Yet, Romney spoke of the company that manufactures Jeeps “moving all production to China.
The statement stirred fundamental fears in a regional that has been battered by plant closings. So much so that Jeep’s parent company, Chrysler, rushed to clarify that Romney was completely, totally, incredibly wrong. “Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China,” announced Chrysler.
Company spokesman Gaulberto Ranieri said that Romney had remade the facts so aggressively that: “It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats.”
What was Romney’s response to being caught in a lie.
He lied bigger.
Much bigger.
The Romney campaign is now airing an ad in Ohio that claims President Obama, with the auto bailout that saved domestic vehicle production, “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.”
The ad concludes that Romney—whose Bain Capital enterprise identified as “a pioneer of outsourcing”—“will fight for every American job.”
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and one of the nation’s top experts on political advertising reviewed the ad and dismissed it as “inferentially false.”
“They are inviting a false inference,” Hall said of the Romney campaign’s attempt to suggest that Obama had engineered a change in Jeep’s status that would see the Toledo plant shuttered and its more than 3,500 workers idled.
The Washington Post “Fact Checker” site reviewed Romney’s ad and declared: “the overall message of the ad is clearly misleading—especially since it appears to have been designed to piggyback off of Romney’s gross misstatement that Chrysler was moving Ohio factory jobs to China.”
The pushback from Obama’s backers and his campaign has been aggressive.
Former President Bill Clinton flew to Ohio and decried Romney’s claim as “the biggest load of bull in the world.”
Vice President Joe Biden said: “I have never seen anything like that. It’s an absolutely, patently false assertion. It’s such an outrageous assertion that, one of the few times in my memory, a major American corporation, Chrysler, has felt obliged to go public and say, there is no truth.”
An Obama campaign ad announced that “now, after Romney’s false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China, Chrysler itself has refuted Romney’s lie.”
What was Romney’s response.
Up the ad buy.
Expand the big lie so that it is now enormous.
The deception has become such a serious issue that, on Tuesday, Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne felt compelled to clarify what is becoming an international controversy.
“Chrysler Group’s production plans for the Jeep brand have become the focus of public debate. I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China,” wrote Marchionne, who added:
North American production is critical to achieving our goal of selling 800,000 Jeep vehicles by 2014. In fact, U.S. production of our Jeep models has nearly tripled (it is expected to be up 185 percent) since 2009 in order to keep up with global demand…
With the increase in demand for our vehicles, especially Jeep branded vehicles, we have added more than 11,200 U.S. jobs since 2009. Plants producing Jeep branded vehicles alone have seen the number of people invested in the success of the Jeep brand grow to more than 9,300 hourly jobs from 4,700. This will increase by an additional 1,100 as the Liberty successor, which will be produced in Toledo, is introduced for global distribution in the second quarter of 2013.
There was nothing unambiguous about that statement. Yet Marchionne continued: “Jeep is one of our truly global brands with uniquely American roots. This will never change. So much so that we committed that the iconic Wrangler nameplate, currently produced in our Toledo, Ohio, plant, will never see full production outside the United States.”
“Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand,” confirmed Marchionne. “It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.”
That’s a rare commitment by a manufacturer—far more clear and unequivocal than the commitment Bain Capital made to the companies it bought up, tore apart and outsourced.
Yet, Mitt Romney’s campaign is still running the ad.
Still lying.
That’s made United Auto Workers union president Bob King furious:
It is especially hypocritical of Mr. Romney’s statements and new ad is Bain Capital’s closing of profitable U.S. facilities and shifting work to China to make even higher profits like what is happening today in closing a profitable Sensata plant in Freeport, IL, to move the work to China. Romney says in the ad that he will fight for every American job, so why isn’t he fighting for the American jobs at Sensata? And why isn’t he intervening with his own Bain Capital to keep these jobs in the U.S. rather than outsourcing them to China? We just wish that Mr. Romney was as committed to investing in the U.S. as Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne is.
Americans will remember that President Obama stood behind American working families and American communities in rescuing the U.S. auto industry and that Mr. Romney opposed the rescue and now attacks Chrysler with misinformation. In putting out this misinformation, Romney is recklessly undermining Chrysler’s reputation and threatening good American jobs.
Imagine if Mitt Romney were to be elected president of the United States.
Imagine if he had to go into negotiations with Marchionne, or another CEO of another industrial giant, about protecting US jobs. Or expanding US manufacturing.
Would the executive trust Romney?
Or would the executive remember Romney as the politician who lied and then lied bigger in order to get what he wanted?
That’s a question that American voters who want their country to have a future as a country that makes cars and trucks and Jeeps would be wise to ponder as November 6 approaches.
By; John Nichols, The Nation, October 30, 2012
“Binders Full Of Lies”: Mitt Romney Doubles Down On Auto Industry Lies
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.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, October 30, 2012
“An Imaginary America Of The Past”: The GOP Pays The Big Price For Bashing Latinos
At last, bipartisan agreement! You don’t need a degree in political science to know this: demonizing and alienating the fastest-growing group in the country is no way to build long-term political success. Pair that with the fact that demonizing any group of Americans is un-American and just plain wrong. But in recent years, Republicans, and especially party standard-bearer Mitt Romney, just haven’t been able to help themselves. In an effort to win over a shrinking and increasingly extreme base, Romney and team have sold their souls to get the Republican presidential nomination. And they went so far to do it that even their famous etch-a-sketch won’t be able to erase their positions.
As Mitt Romney knows, the slipping support of the GOP among Latinos is no mystery. We’ve seen this movie before, in 1994, when Republican California Gov. Pete Wilson pushed anti-immigrant smears to promote California’s anti-immigrant Prop. 187, which in turn buoyed his own tough reelection campaign. It worked in the short term — both the ballot measure and Gov. Wilson won handily — but what a long term price to pay as California became solidly blue for the foreseeable future.
We’re now seeing what happened in California at a national scale. Harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric helped Romney win the Republican primary. But in the general election, it may well be his downfall.
In case you tuned out Romney’s appeals to the anti-immigrant right during the primaries, here’s a quick recap. He ran ads specifically criticizing Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina Supreme Court justice. He says he’d veto the DREAM Act, a rare immigration provision with overwhelming bipartisan support. He took on anti-immigrant leader Kris Kobach, architect of the draconian anti-immigrant measures in Arizona and Alabama as an adviser, then said his immigration plan was to force undocumented immigrants to “self-deport.” He even endorsed Iowa Rep. Steve King, who suggested building an electric fence at the Mexican border, comparing immigrants to “livestock” and “dogs.” Romney’s new attempts to appeal to Latino voters are clearly empty — he’s already promised the right that he will use their anti-immigrant rhetoric whenever it’s convenient and shut down any reasonable attempts at immigration reform.
If President Obama wins reelection, however, we have a real chance for real immigration reform. He told the Des Moines Register last week that if reelected he will work to achieve immigration reform next year. Beyond incremental steps like his institution of part of the DREAM Act by executive order, real comprehensive immigration reform would finally ease the uncertainty of millions of immigrants and the businesses that hire them. It’s something that George W. Bush and John McCain wanted before it was thwarted by extremists in their own party. It’s something that Mitt Romney clearly won’t even try.
If President Obama wins, and especially when he wins with the help of Latino voters turned off by the GOP’s anti-immigrant politics, he will have a strong mandate to create clear and lasting immigration reform. And Republicans will have to think twice before hitching their futures on the politics of demonization and exclusion. Whereas George W. Bush won 44 percent of the Latino vote in 2004 and John McCain 31 percent in 2008, Mitt Romney is polling at just 21 percent among Latinos. That’s no coincidence.
My group, People For the American Way, has been working to make sure that the GOP’s anti-Latino policies and rhetoric are front and center during the presidential election. We’re running a comprehensive campaign aimed at the large Latino populations in Nevada and Colorado and the rapidly growing Latino populations in Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia and North Carolina. In each of those states, we’re strategically targeting Latino voters with TV and radio ads, direct mail, Internet ads and phone banking to make sure they hear the GOP’s message about their community. In Colorado, we’re going up against Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, which knows just as well as Romney that the loss of Latino voters “spells doom” for Republicans. In all of these states, higher turnout among Latinos motivated by Mitt Romney’s attacks could swing critical electoral votes.
This is a battle where the right thing to do and the politically smart thing to do are one and the same. Republicans have embraced racially-charged attacks against Latinos, pushed English-only laws, attempted to legalize racial profiling by immigration enforcement, dehumanized immigrants and even attacked the first Latina Supreme Court justice for talking about her heritage. They deserve to lose the votes of Latinos and others for it. This presidential election is a choice between right-wing scare tactics — the last resort of those fighting to return to an imaginary America of the past — and policies that embrace and celebrate our growing Latino population as an integral part of what is the real America.
By: Michael B, Keegan, President, People for the American Way, The Huffington Post, October 30, 201
“Glib Ideological Purity”: Mitt Romney Would Pass The Buck On Disasters
Back when he was being “severely conservative,” Mitt Romney suggested that responsibility for disaster relief should be taken from the big, bad federal government and given to the states, or perhaps even privatized. Hurricane Sandy would like to know if he’d care to reconsider.
The absurd, and dangerous, policy prescription came in a GOP primary debate in June. Moderator John King said he had recently visited communities affected by severe weather and noted that the Federal Emergency Management Agency “is about to run out of money.”
“There are some people . . . who say, you know, maybe we’re learning a lesson here that the states should take on more of this role,” King said. “How do you deal with something like that?”
Romney replied: “Absolutely. Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.”
Romney went on to express the general principle that, given the crushing national debt, “we should take all of what we’re doing at the federal level and say, ‘What are the things we’re doing that we don’t have to do?’ ”
King gave him a chance to back off: “Including disaster relief, though?”
Romney didn’t blink. “We cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids,” he said, adding that “it is simply immoral . . . to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids.”
Now, with an unprecedented and monstrous storm bashing the East Coast, this glib exercise in ideological purity is newly relevant. Was Romney really saying that the federal government should abdicate the task of responding to natural disasters such as the one now taking place? Yes, he was. Did he really mean it? Well, with Romney, that’s always another question.
As the legendary Watergate source Deep Throat never actually said: “Follow the money.”
The dishonest “solution” proposed by Romney and running mate Paul Ryan for the federal government’s budget woes relies largely on a shell game: Transfer unfunded liabilities to the states.
Most disastrously, this is what Romney and Ryan propose for Medicaid, the health-care program for the poor. The GOP plan would give the states block grants that would not begin to cover Medicaid’s rising costs. Governors and legislatures would be forced to impose draconian cuts, with potentially catastrophic impact for millions of Americans.
Medicaid’s most expensive role — and thus, under Romney, the most imperiled — is to fund nursing-home care for seniors who classify as “poor” only because they have exhausted their life savings. Transferring the onus of Medicaid and other programs to the states would save money only by making it impossible to provide services at current levels.
For the hard-right ideologues who control the Republican Party, this would be a good thing. Our society has become too dependent on government, they believe, too “entitled” to benefits; we are unwilling to “take personal responsibility and care for” our lives, as Romney said in his secretly recorded “47 percent” speech.
Romney’s budget proposals would end all this coddling — except for the Pentagon and its contractors, who would get a big boost in federal largess, and of course, the wealthy, who would get a huge tax cut.
So-called “discretionary” federal spending would be sharply reduced. This would include spending for such agencies as FEMA. So yes, even if Romney was just pandering to the right-wing base at that June debate, one consequence of his policies would be to squeeze funding for federal emergency relief.
I guess having to survive a few hurricanes, tornados and earthquakes on our own would certainly foster personal responsibility.
And by the way, why is it that we’re having such a huge hurricane make landfall in such an unusual place at such a late date in the season? Is this another of those freakish once-in-a-century weather events that seem to be happening so often these days?
I know it’s impossible to definitively blame any one storm on human-induced atmospheric warming. But I’m sorry, these off-the-charts phenomena are becoming awfully commonplace. By the time scientists definitively establish what’s happening, it will be too late.
As has been noted, the words “climate change” were not spoken during the presidential debates. Hurricane Sandy wants to know why.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 29, 2012
“Mark Halperin, Amateur Meterologist”: Not Even Hurricanes Can Stop Dumb Punditry
Will Hurricane Sandy cause an Electoral College tie and turn Ohio into this year’s Florida 2000? PROBABLY. At least, something along those lines is what political pundits are hoping for today.
The two most important events in the world right now are the presidential campaign and a major East Coast weather event, so obviously “politicos” are trying to figure out how to combine the two things into one convenient and snappy cable television hit.
Mark Halperin, MSNBC political talking guy, Time political writing guy, blogger and amateur meteorologist, has multiple competing opinions about what this storm that actually threatens to destroy much of the East Coast and kill and displace thousands of people means for the president’s reelection bid.
On “The Morning Joe Show” this morning, Halperin said White House adviser David Plouffe was clever to convince the president to cancel his campaign event in Florida today and go to Washington to be the president of hurricane response.
I think the most important person in this election right now is not the candidates, for today at least, it’s David Plouffe, senior White House adviser, ran the President’s campaign last time. Brilliant at understanding the intersection between the campaign and the government. Lots of control over both, and, obviously, was central to the decision to say the President shouldn’t do this event in Florida today, should come back to Washington. And I think you will see David Plouffe doing a couple things. One, the symbolism of the office, making sure they don’t mess up.
Great, great insight. It took a canny political mind to decide to … go manage the storm response, and the No. 1 goal for Obama right now is “manage the storm response well and not horribly.” Incisive stuff.
Then, like an hour later, Mark Halperin decided, on Twitter, that canceling campaign events to do disaster response was a bad idea, probably.
@MarkHalperin : W/Obama nixing events, gotta ask: what happened to constant White House claim POTUS can do job equally well from anywhere? #bothparties
Just gotta ask!
Will President Obama lose the election if he spends too much of this week running FEMA and not being in Florida and Ohio over and over again? Shouldn’t he take off his coat and roll up his sleeves and direct storm response from … Northern Virginia, maybe? Just one thing is “clear now,” to Mark Halperin: that people who may or may not lose elections next week will think the hurricane is responsible. Fascinating, if true.
(Actual smart people basically agree: There is no way of knowing how this storm will actually affect the election, if it does, which it might or might not.)
By: Alex Pareene, Salon, October 29, 2012
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