Mitt Romney's disastrous day

[Riot]

There are two sides to every story. Even though The Washington Post doesn't like Romney and they didn't like the ad, they admitted that the ad was "factually defensible" and "technically correct".

Washington Post

Romney goes off-road with the truth

By Dana Milbank, Tuesday, October 30, 7:20 PM

Mitt Romney spoke to supporters in the Ohio town of Defiance last week, but his words came from the twin cities of Duplicity and Deception.

“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 Republican presidential nominee proclaimed, referring to the automaker President Obama saved from dissolution with taxpayer funds. “I will fight for every good job in America.”

The truth, however, was roughly 180 degrees opposite Romney’s claim.

Chrysler, which owns the Jeep label, has added about 7,000 jobs in North America since it emerged from bankruptcy proceedings in June 2009, and it continues to expand its U.S. workforce and to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in American plants.

Romney’s fiction was apparently based on a misreading of a Bloomberg News report a few days earlier, which said that Chrysler would resume production in China for the first time since parent Fiat SpA bought the company — in addition to Chrysler’s production in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio.

“Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China,” Chrysler executive Gualberto Ranieri wrote in a statement, using italics for emphasis. “A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.” Ranieri said the conclusion that it was moving all production to China was “a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats.”

But in the game of trickery, Romney is exceedingly dexterous.

A couple of days later, his campaign came out with an ad in Ohio repeating the allegation in a way that tweaked the wording to make it technically true, while continuing to give the same false impression:

“Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.”

Romney’s ongoing deception led Chrysler’s CEO to send a letter Tuesday to the company’s jittery employees, assuring them that “Jeep production will not be moved from the United States” and that “It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.”

The restored production in China was to avoid huge tariffs on vehicles imported into China.

The fast-and-loose with Jeep points to a troubling Romney instinct: When the stakes are high, as they are for him in must-win Ohio, the truth is often the first casualty.