The Left has caught the vapors or the fantods over a recent Bloomberg News article that suggested Jeep may move some of its manufacturing capacity to China.
From Bloomberg:
Fiat is in “very detailed conversations” with its Chinese partner, Guangzhou Automobile Group Co. (2238), about making Jeeps in the world’s largest auto market, said Mike Manley, chief operating officer of Fiat and Chrysler in Asia. Chrysler hasn’t built Jeeps there since before Fiat took control in 2009.
“The volume opportunity for us is very significant,” Manley, who is also president of the Jeep brand, said in an interview at Chrysler’s Auburn Hills, Michigan, headquarters. “We’re reviewing the opportunities within existing capacity” as well as “should we be localizing the entire Jeep portfolio or some of the Jeep portfolio.”
And into this story, like many others, stepped a presidential election. Or two.
As background, president Obama has been going around saying that our will-be president, our president-in-waiting, Mitt Romney has moved jobs overseas in a nefarious war on the middle class that Mitt has been engaged in since he wrongly choose not to be aborted prior to his birth in 1947.
Thus, not only does Mitt HATE the middle class, says a paraphrase of the president and his automated surrogates, but he has ALSO interfered with a woman’s right to choose only Barack Obama on their presidential ballot (insert War on Women rhetoric here- see Wasserman, Schultz, Debbie).
So… goes the new party line (pun intended)… Darth Romney struck back against young Luke Obama, by making an ad that The Atlantic’s Molly Ball says is “technically true,” but such a rightist deviation from rigid Obama orthodoxy that it must be a LIE- of course- even though it’s true, you know, in a factual sense.
Facts don’t scare Obama and his friends. Molly Balls says so.
“79 percent” of voters in Ohio- a toss-up, battleground state with 18 electoral votes- “thought the auto industry was an important issue,” says Molly.
So there.
What Molly and her friends are hyperventilating about is that Mitt has turned the tables on young Barack Skywalker, using a Romney endorsement from Lee Iacocca and the Detroit News, plus Romney’s general familiarity with the auto industry- an important issue- against the Force. Molly knows that even if what the GOP nominee is saying is technically true, he is still “accurate, but highly misleading.”
Shame on him. Doesn’t he know that only Obama can be highly misleading?
Romney’s ad brings all of his strengths on business and autos together, and then lands this very accurate haymaker: "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China,"
Take THAT outsourcing Obama.
Romney’s dad was governor of Michigan in Detroit’s automotive heyday. Mitt knows more about the auto industry than Obama could learn if he spent the rest of his life writing and giving speeches about the subject. And Obama writing books and speeches defending his presidency is a Stay Puft Marshmallow moment of Choose and Perish if ever there was one (Chinese subtitles brought to you by Fiat).
So liberals are struck with sputtering, a fly of spit frothing from their mouths.
Oh, my God!, liberals are arguing- except of course the very existence of God is also a deviation of the rigid party orthodoxy that comes from the Left. Oh, my Obama! might be more appropriate.
Ok, so liberals expect that highly misleading, accurate truth stuff from Romney, but Bloomberg News?
Quick fact interruption: Mayor Michael Bloomberg- yes, the Bloomberg of Bloomberg News- visited the NYSE the other day in wake of the Al Gore-inspired storm of the century Sandy Gore, and Bloomberg actually managed not to ban ANYTHING.
True. Must have been a really bad storm.
Ok so back to the story: Jeep’s foreign owned parent company, Fiat, stepped into the election storm by saying: “Who? Us? Why would we build cars more cheaply in China?” Actually they didn’t really say that, although they really did, when you consult the actual facts.
“I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China,” says Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, who then adds ambiguously: “Together, we are working to establish a global enterprise and previously announced our intent to return Jeep production to China, the world’s largest auto market, in order to satisfy local market demand, which would not otherwise be accessible.”
Except Romney didn’t say they were moving jobs to China, just that they’d be building Jeeps in China, which they got from, you know, a direct quote from the chief operating officer of Fiat and Chrysler in Asia who just happens to be the head of Jeep. And from the Fiat CEO “who announced our intent to return Jeep production to China.”
Good thing they aren’t going to produce Jeeps in China.
Or are they?
Romney on the other hand did accuse Obama waterboy, General Motors, of moving American auto jobs overseas.
Says Forbes:
To be exact: GM’s December 31, 2011 annual report shows General Motors of North America accounting for 98,000 of the 207,000 GM jobs worldwide. But 12,000 of these jobs are in Canada and 11,500 are in Mexico. Accordingly, GM has 74,500 jobs in the United States and 122,500 abroad, even after Obama’s touted surge in Detroit jobs. Almost two thirds of GM’s jobs are in other countries.
And Romney has hammered GM and Obama on these facts.
Still liberals claim that it’s all just so confusing that there is really-no-way that Obama could be wrong.
It’s all Bloomberg News’ fault.
“Romney had apparently misread a confusingly written Bloomberg report (or read an inaccurate summary of it),” says Molly Ball, “in which the company talked about making Jeeps in China in addition to the current U.S. operation.”
It’s nice to know that Ball, who has no idea what she’s talking about, apparently knows what Romney apparently reads or misreads. And to think: He then writes TV commercials about it without consulting anyone.
Political candidates, with the possible of exception of Obama caught without a teleprompter, know exactly what they are saying. Especially when they record a TV commercial about it or put out a blog post about it or give an interview to Bloomberg News about building cars in China.
It’s a practice that Jeep and Fiat and General Motors and Molly Ball should pay attention to.
Stay on message.
Mitt’s good at that.
So here’s the solution: Maybe they can get Mayor Bloomberg to ban that.
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