GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s controversial auto bailout ads suggesting GM and Chrysler are poised to ship jobs to China are not so much about convincing voters as they are about pushing turnout,
The Washington Post reported.
A Romney radio ad running in Ohio asserts, “Barack Obama says he saved the auto industry. But for who? Ohio or China?”
The ads have been attacked not just by Democrats but fact checkers and executives at the auto companies themselves. Chrysler’s CEO e-mailed employees to say the Romney ads were wrong and GM called the ads “politics at its cynical worst.”
“I see this more as a turnout game than a persuasion ad,” Patrick Haney, a political science professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, told the Post. “I take it as an indication that they believe they’re behind . . . So they might as well be a little riskier and on the edge.”
However, the Romney campaign is not backing down. Campaign aides told the Post the ads are accurate and that Romney will win Ohio.
“American taxpayers are on track to lose $25 billion as a result of President Obama’s handling of the auto bailout, and GM and Chrysler are expanding their production overseas,” Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan said in a statement.
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