Romney needs to hire an actual campaign manager.
All he is going to accomplish with this is to make sure that NO ONE who works for the auto industry OR their families OR their friends will be voting for him.
Which pretty much means that he's paying for an ad that will give Ohio to Obama.

Who are the workers more likely to trust? The owner of the company or the guy running for President?

I don't get it. This is either desperation, really poor campaign management, or both.

It's the logical conclusion of the post-truth/post-reality campaign. This is nothing but a fever dream, and it's being treated as if it's reality. It may even be the defining test of the media in this cycle. Will the mainstream media do what they've been doing and report it as "he said/she said" and there's no way to know what the actual truth is or will they finally and very belatedly analyze what's being said and report that this claim is something out of a parallel universe and is patently false?

Could have sworn GM was building a new factory in Mexico. It makes sense to build them there and freight them up north. Takes too long to build them in China and ship to West Coast.

The Romney campaign is probably just thinking, "What do we have to lose?" They're already behind on the issue of the auto bailout and it's hurting them. Even if these ads are full of crap and the media call them out on them, at the very least they'll sow doubt and fear, chipping away at Obama's advantage, and maybe it will be enough to make the difference. They'll just reinforce the message through relentless repetition - Mitt wants to save auto jobs while Obama wants to send them to China - through their surrogates, conservative media, and the campaign events. It's amazing how such a simple message can stick, particularly if it says what a target audience already wants to believe.

I think it's a smart move to flood the airwaves with these mendacious ads.

By standard Repug projection, this can only mean that Romney has plans to move all auto manufacturing overseas.

Details doubtless include giving huge tax credits to the companies building the ships to transport the cars, then selling derivatives betting against the profitability of the same companies as oil prices rise during the 2014 Israel-US/Iran war.

The Romney campaign will say whatever they feel like - they do not get challenged by the mainstream press - and the rubes who will vote for Mitt are easily hoodwinked. Romney will adopt whatever position that serves his ambitions. Why not? Apparently the Republican constituency could care less about principles. It's all about getting rid of Obama.

you don't see the strategy in trying to confuse the elderly and low-information voters with lies and distortions?

Regarding how the bailout worked...From the not-entirely-useless PolitiFact (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/…

"Referring to the time Obama took office, January 2009, GM and Chrysler by then had received almost $14 billion in bailout money. News reports also reflect that the money was basically used up. So, that much is correct. But the movie ignores the fact that this was not unexpected. The Bush administration’s loans were always just a temporary lifeline, meant to keep the companies operating so the new president would have time to decide what to do long term."

Bush loaned a bit of interim cash, but Obama made the decision to keep the auto companies alive. Much to the dismay of Republicans and pundits around the country.

who is once again the largest auto manufacturer on earth (by units sold)? General Motors is. That's what you tell Ohio.

It's a classic Rove type strategy -- take your weakness and project it onto your opponent. One of Romney's weaknesses is he has a reputation for having outsourced jobs while working at Bain. Now he's turned that on Obama.

Most of the bank bailout (almost all of it) was under Bush. Most of the auto bailout was under Obama. I wish people knew that (most assume that Obama was President for most, if not all, of both).

Getting back to this story, I'm really surprised this is a Romney ad. It looks like it is backfiring. The last thing you want is the head of GM or Chrysler calling you a liar. You know what the unions think of him. I assumed these ads were independent ads supporting Romney, not "I approve this message" ads by the governor's campaign. There is a lot going on right now, but he may have just made a huge political mistake.

Imagine if there were no bailout.

Ford, the only profitable truly private company among the Big 3 could have probably bought up GM and Chrysler and turned itself into an even bigger international giant, capable of competing with the soaring Toyota.

As it is now, Toyota is having record sales (except for China, where there's some sort of war or something going on with Japan) and no American based company can seem to catch up with them or KIA-Hyundai.

@14: Dumbass, the only reason the government bailed out Chrysler and GM is because no private companies wanted to risk taking on their debt.

@14: A higher % of Toyotas than Ford are built in the States, both in quantity of cars and their actual, manufactured parts. If you want to buy American, buy Toyota. And I drive a Ford Escape.

@14: Ford had their own massive debt they were still paying off from their own restructuring that started in 2006; the last thing they would have needed is to take on more of it. People forget now, but Ford very nearly went bankrupt back then.

A GM/Chrysler bankruptcy would probably have hurt Ford badly by decimating the parts supply chain.