Romney Camp: Pay No Attention To The Auto Companies Calling Us Liars

Two auto companies made a surprise foray into the presidential campaign on Tuesday, bluntly calling out Mitt Romney for his deceptive Ohio ads that suggest they plan to ship local jobs to China. But according to the Romney campaign, there’s nothing to see here.

“Their comments don’t refute anything in our ad,” spokeswoman Andrea Saul told the Detroit News on Wednesday.

That’s true only in the narrowest, most carefully lawyered sense. After Romney outright misstated last week that Jeep was considering shipping Ohio jobs to China, a claim the company immediately denied (they’re actually adding jobs at their Ohio plant), their ads were more careful to say only that Jeep was looking at expanding in China. This is accurate, but the company says it’s completely unrelated to their domestic workforce and only part of operations catering to the Asian market. And the innuendo behind their TV ads and especially their radio ads is as unmistakably clear as it is misleading: the auto bailout didn’t really save Ohio jobs, it’s sending them to China.