Apart from the storm news, there has been some political news that I cannot let go of.
Mitt Romney must realize that he has lost the industrial Midwest because he's completely lost a grip on reality. He's decided to throw a Hail Mary pass that will cause his already-struggling campaign to implode in Ohio.
Last week, Romney falsely claimed, "Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China."
When Romney said that, Chrysler responded by calling the statement "a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats" to suggest that it would close U.S. facilities and move all operations to China. In fact, Chrysler is hiring over 2,000 more people in Toledo and Detroit.
But Romney decided to double down on the deception. The campaign is running the ad in the video below in select Ohio markets.
Chrysler had this response to the ad: "Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to china." Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of Chrysler, sent an email to employees today again expressly stating that Chrysler is absolutely not sending jobs to China.
The Washington Post's Fact Checker gave the ad four Pinocchios -- you can't get rated any more deceptive than that.
President Obama's campaign ran this response to the ad.
And then, Romney's campaign did it again! But this time it wasn't Chrysler - now they're paying for a radio ad saying the same thing about General Motors.
Which caused GM to issue this statement:
We've clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days, no amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.
The Romney ads are so offensive because it is a bald-faced lie. And he knows it's a lie. But because Romney is such a desperate, opportunistic, single-minded politician, he doesn't care that he's lying.
It's his scorched earth policy -- he'll do whatever it takes to win, no matter what the consequences to our politics, our country, or our people.
It's what Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers, yesterday called "winning without honor." I'm not sure that even goes far enough.
Ohioans aren't going to be fooled by this deception. Here's how the Cleveland Plain Dealer put it: "It won't work. Ohio voters know who stepped up when the auto industry was at the abyss -- and it wasn't Romney."
Let me say this to the people of Ohio -- I can understand why you'd be ticked off. Mitt Romney is lying to you because he thinks you're too oblivious to remember the truth,
Unfortunately, neither you nor I can respond with the choice words we might like to use. But fortunately we can send an even more powerful response to this garbage. You'll have the final word, in one week. On election day.
