“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.  I will fight for every good job in America. I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair America will win.”
~Mitt Romney in Defiance, Ohio, home to a General Motors powertrain plant

So – given the long history of pathological and blatant falsehoods by Mitt Romney … one has to ask themself whether or not this latest falsehood from Romney is an accident or an intentional and blatant lie.  Myself – I think he’s much smarter than this.  He is a guy worth at least $250 million who is one of the world’s foremost authorities on exploiting tax loopholes and exploiting workers … a guy with two degrees from Harvard.  So – how does a guy with that background and pedigree always seem to get it wrong on the campaign trail?  Well – it’s intentional.  His campaign has a track record of saying incorrect things in public and then either correcting them quietly behind the scenes or simply not acknowledging his statements at all.  It isn’t a coincidence that he made this claim to a town that had a GM plant; that was the point.

Separate from his long history of lying to the American people; it should concern all Americans that a serious Presidential candidate like Mitt Romney has a history of just reacting to erroneous news reports written by conservative bloggers without checking out all the facts.  We already dealt with that for 8 years and it didn’t go that well.

The guy who wrote “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” and has a history of denouncing “protectionism” against China (source) is now somehow the champion of American jobs protecting us from China.  Got it.

Detroit News has the story HERE:

Romney was apparently responding to reports Thursday on right-leaning blogs that misinterpreted a recent Bloomberg News story earlier this week that said Chrysler, owned by Italian automaker Fiat SpA, is thinking of building Jeeps in China for sale in the Chinese market.

The Bloomberg story, though accurate, “has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. work force. It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats,” Chrysler spokesman Gualberto Ranieri said.

“Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation.”

The Bloomberg story, however, sparked the confusion in the first paragraph of the story, saying Chrysler planned to return Jeep output to China “and may eventually make all of its models in that country.”

You can see Chrysler’s fact check of Romney’s claim HERE.

And now … the Romney campaign will not set the record straight or answer any questions on the matter.  As the Detroit Free Press writes HERE:

A spokesman for the Republican presidential candidate declined to answer questions about the candidate’s incorrect reading of a news report that Chrysler was considering moving all Jeep production to China.

Obama’s stance on Romney and the auto industry:

“If Mitt Romney had been president when the auto industry was on the verge of collapse, we might not have an American auto industry today. We’d be buying cars from China, instead of selling cars to China.”

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