The Mitt Romney campaign is arguing that they will win Ohio despite the polls, but it’s hard to believe them given the desperate Jeep ads Romney has been running. The Toledo Blade is one of many news organizations slamming the ads, and they offered up a scathing editorial.
In the final few days of the presidential contest, Mitt Romney evidently recognizes that his opposition to the federal rescue of General Motors and Chrysler is costing him voter support he needs in Ohio and Michigan. So the Republican nominee is conducting an exercise in deception about auto-industry issues that is remarkable even by the standards of his campaign.
At an appearance last week in Defiance, Mr. Romney announced that “Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China.” That assertion was based on an ambiguously worded news report.
Chrysler, which owns Jeep and in which the Italian automaker Fiat has a majority stake, quickly denied the report. A company spokesman said Mr. Romney’s rhetorical leap “would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats.” But the Romney campaign launched an ad in Ohio that claimed that President Obama, who presided over the auto bailout, “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.”
Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne removed all doubt about his company’s intentions this week in an email to employees: “Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China,” he said. “Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand. It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.”
The ads seem to be backfiring. Voters in Ohio aren’t stupid. They follow the auto industry and they know a lie when they hear one.
The presidential race is super close. Mitt Romney was gaining, but then President Obama had two very good debates performances. The clip above from the foreign policy debate got a ton of play as Obama hit Romney hard for his silly comments about the size of the Navy.
Of course, Ohio is the ultimate swing state again, and Obama is holding on to a small but stable lead. If that happens, there’s almost no way Romney can win.
There’s no way Mitt Romney can win the presidential election without winning Ohio, and the auto bailout is making it very difficult for him in Ohio.
Democratic strategists and independent political observers credit Obama’s advantage to his support for the auto bailout and strategy of appealing to blue-collar workers. They also note that Ohio’s 7.2 percent unemployment rate is a full percentage point lower than the national average.
“Romney is going to have to do something very unusual to take Ohio away from the president,” said Jim Friedman, a Cleveland lawyer whose involvement with the state’s Democratic Party has spanned several decades.
Obama “is not doing great in Ohio, but he’s doing well enough,” said Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, who helped conduct the latest poll. “Obviously these numbers are good for him, and if the president wins this state, he’s going to get reelected.”
The auto bailout is perhaps Obama’s trump card in Ohio.
Friedman argued Obama’s support and Romney’s opposition to the bailout are resonating in Ohio, where the car industry “is both historically and psychologically important.”
Romney is trying to fight back, as he just launched a new ad showing a dealer who lost his dealership as a result of the bailout. But this is pure desperation, as that dealership would have gone under with Romney as president as well, since Romney opposed the auto bailout or any help for the industry in the middle of the financial crisis.
Obama leads GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney by seven points in the latest state poll by the Democratic-leaning pollster PPP, besting the former Massachusetts governor 49-42. Rick Santorum trails the president by 6 points, 48 to 42. Obama also beats Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul by by 12 and 10 points, respectively.
Obama’s numbers are up 8 points since the last PPP poll.
This is very bad news for Mitt Romney, as there’s really no way he can win without Ohio. Romney’s problem is that he supported SB5 and Issue 2, and there’s video to prove it.