Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 12:33 am
Today, a relentless assault on Romney’s auto lies dominated on the Sunday shows, from Fox News to David Gregory. Yes, you read that correctly.
Watch a montage of Romney surrogates getting pushed on the Jeep and GM moving production to China lies here, courtesy of Obama for America:
An incredulous David Gregory on Meet the Press to a frozen Eric Cantor, “The head of Chrysler said that that is deceptive… This from a business leader, Governor Romney, who apparently thinks it’s good business to outsource in order to make companies more competitive. Is this the hopeful, specific agenda that Governor Romney has for the state of Ohio and the country?”
On CNN’s State of the Union, Candy Crowley said, “You’ve been able to unite both corporate America and the unions in this false ad.”
Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, “Wasn’t that a mistake, especially when both Chrysler and GM said the ad was misleading and the fact is that Chrysler, far from shipping jobs out of Ohio is actually expanding operations in Toledo.”
Republicans can usually count on the Sunday talk shows as a place to spin their “facts” and even get the host to carry their water for them. Studies prove that Democrats have fewer surrogates on the shows and they get more negative press.
But today, all of that changed.
Sadly, I suspect this is more about who Romney lied about than the fact that he lied, as Romney has lied this egregiously before. It’s just that this is the first time he took aim at major U.S. corporations with his lies. Romney damaged their brands with his lies, and that will not be allowed to stand in America. See, they spend a lot of money on TV advertising branding their cars as made in America (see where I’m going with that?) — it’s a vital part of their brand and comeback, especially after the auto bailout. It’s also a part of hoping to get Americans to buy American.
I happen to be a big supporter of the “Big Three” (well, two out of three now), hailing from Michigan as I do. It’s terrible that Romney lied about their plans for production, hurting their brands when they’ve worked so hard to come back. But it bothers me to see that it took this for the media to wake up. It took corporations with power and money to spend on advertising to call Romney out before the media suddenly found the ability to call a lie a lie. If there is one thing that we value, it’s the right of corporations to maintain their brand.
People? Not so much. Unions? Ha ha. The 47%? Teachers? Minorities? Undocumented workers? Women? Students? Veterans? Gays? Y’all already had your brands cooked. No one cared.
But if you go after corporations, the Sunday shows gonna get ya’.
Fourteen years ago, before corporations owned all of the news, a friend of mine produced the news for an NBC affiliate in a major market. I will never forget the day he called me in despair, after being ordered to kill a story that reflected poorly on a major advertiser. It’s much worse now, not better.
Romney took on the world, and never met a victim he couldn’t roll over… until he took on Chrysler and GM.
When is Romney going to learn you don’t mess with Detroit? He’s from the same city as I am, and he still doesn’t know anything about the industry he claims to love so much or the people behind it. Aside from their elevated status as advertisers who pay a lot of money to the networks now standing up for them, Detroit also represents the pride and persistence of the auto companies. Their ability to come back is as American as the Jeep Wrangler and the good paying jobs they provide that helped build our middle class.
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