Lil White Lies: Read It and Jeep

PolitiFact Bias (PFB) gleefully joins with the anti-PolitiFact blog counterirritant in misrepresenting a blatant misrepresentation by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney as we enter the last 100 hours of the 2012 presidential campaign.

PolitiFact awarded a Pants on Fire (and WaPo FactChecker and Factcheck.org agree in line with it) when the Romney campaign released an ad which said:

Who will do more for the auto industry? Not Barack Obama. Fact checkers confirm that his attacks on Mitt Romney are false. The truth? Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry. He is supported by Lee Iacocca and the Detroit News. Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.

It basically was "piggy-backed" (Glenn Kessler's words) from a very similar statement Romney had made during an Ohio campaign stop: " “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."

 

That's pretty much everything....so PFB and counterirritant decide that "building Jeeps in China" is technically true as parsed waaaaaaaay out of context, and the fact-checkers need to fact-check more, as the loud and clear, self-evident implication isn't enough. They need to actually verify that the Chinese production is replacing (at least some of) the American production. Counterirritant thinks he knows the fact of the matter, and he condescendingly tells us: "For those slow on the uptake: Jeep vehicles that will be produced in China by Chinese workers are currently produced in the U.S by U.S. workers."

 

Nope, not quite. Because when Chrysler or Fiat talk about this Chinese production, it's added production, not replacement. Chrysler built Jeeps in China--for the Chinese market--before Fiat acquired it in 2009. And Romney's fearmongering came on the heels of this report from the Detroit Free Press:

In fact, Chrysler is investing $500 million at its Toledo North Assembly Plant and plans to add 1,105 new workers by the third quarter of 2013 to build an all-new SUV that will replace the Jeep Liberty.

Production of the new SUV will begin next summer and the hiring process for the new workers, who are scheduled to start by the next fall, has begun, said Chrysler spokeswoman Jodi Tinson.

In other words, as noted succinctly by the New York Times: "Jeep is discussing increasing production in China for sales within China; it is not moving jobs out of Ohio or the United States, or building cars in China for export to the United States."

 

PFB cross-references a Forbes analyst who says Romney never claimed production was being outsourced to China...so what did he claim? If he wasn't trying to tell Chrysler employees their jobs were going to China, what was he trying to tell them? If the ad resulted in "a rash of" Chrysler employees calling the local union office to find out if they were going to lose their jobs, why would they be asking if PFB and counterirritant were correct? PFB avoids the all-important underlying argument here: that disparaging the auto bailout with confusing and misleading messages might shift enough voters to Romney to win Ohio.

 

While PFB and counterirritant focus on one statement they think is technically true, they conveniently ignore the entire campaign ad, which was chock full of deception from beginning to end:

1. “Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry.” No specific plan is referenced in the ad, and Romney’s campaign web site does not include a plan to “help the auto industry.” In 2008, Romney wrote a New York Times editorial titled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” and he re-upped his call against the auto rescue during the Republican primaries this year.

2. “[Romney] is supported by Lee Iaccoca and the Detroit News.” Chrysler Chairman Lee Iaccoca has indeed endorsed Romney. The Detroit News, a self-described “conservative newspaper,” endorsed him last week. But in that endorsement, the paper slammed Romney’s “wrong-headedness on the auto bailout.”

3. “Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy.” Obama did take both companies into a managed bankruptcy, the path Romney says was originally his idea. Romney, however, supported private sector financing of the bankruptcy, a plan that was “pure fantasy” at the time since no private lenders could lend to the companies in the middle of the financial crisis. Without federal intervention, the companies would have almost assuredly collapsed, costing 1.3 million jobs, according to industry estimates.

4. “[Obama] sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.” This week, Romney claimed he read a news story that said Chrysler was planning to “moving all production to China.” The Bloomberg News piece he referenced, though, made it clear that Fiat, the Italian company that now owns Chrysler, was opening new factories in China to make Jeeps for Chinese consumers. No American plants will be closed, and no American jobs will be lost. The ad’s claim may not be as false as Romney’s previous statement, but it is certainly misleading.

So counterirritant concludes with saying that he (whoever he is) has the facts: "When Jeep production for the Chinese market moves to China, it will reduce the number of jobs in the United States and result in the need for fewer U.S. workers. Those are the facts — for anyone who cares to check." I checked (see above). These are not the facts. I hope counterirritant keeps his day job.

 

For someone who makes a huge deal out of context and underlying arguments in his blog, it's ironic that PFB's writer Bryan White totally ignores it when it's comes out of a blatantly, cynically lying Republican.

It's also indeed ironic that my two conservative counterparts would so belittle PolitiFact and the other fact-checkers implicitly in Romney's defense, while the Romney campaign has said that "it will not allow fact-checking to constrain its message. "

As for White's claims that PolitiFact is campaigning for Obama since it said he "rescued the auto industry." From PolitiFact:

With two years until the games were set to begin, officials needed someone who help restore credibility to the organization, and they tapped Romney, a Mormon whose family has deep roots in the state and who attended Brigham Young University.

The Salt Lake City assignment launched Romney into the national spotlight and helped reboot his political career, catapulting to a successful 2002 gubernatorial campaign in Massachusetts.

... Romney is widely credited with creating a sponsorship juggernaut, reeling in such corporations as Allstate, General Mills, Sears Roebuck....

It’s correct that Romney more than balanced the the Salt Lake Organizing Committee’s budget.

"Restore credibility....creating a sponsorship juggernaut"....so, is PolitiFact spinning Romney too? Give me a break.

Postscript:  Here's a few extra tid bits on the Romney ruling which take apart the new Zebra Fact Check on the same subject, and delve into the real reason that Jeep won't be losing production in the U.S.