Mitt Romney and the Republican team like to say they are catching President Obama in Ohio because they have some imaginary momentum. Apparently, Team Romney had been buoyed by a poll commissioned by Ohio media outlets that showed the race tied at 49% in the Buckeye State, according to a New York Daily News report.
That’s what they like to say that they are catching President, but the latest Public Policy Polling (PPP) shows President Obama still Mitt Romney ahead 51-47%. This confirms earlier polls and takes the hot air out of the Romney balloon.
Why?
As much as the Romney Team would like to think they have given an adequate explanation for the Romney position to the auto bailout, the Romney Team has not. Because Mitt Romney did not support the “auto bailout” when it counted. Romney effectively said to the people of Ohio, “Let Ohio Go Bankrupt.”
Why?
Because Mitt Romney failed to stand up for the people of Ohio.
President Barack Obama called out Mitt Romney in Dayton, Ohio last Tuesday at a campaign stop with Vice President Joe Biden. He took Mitt Romney to task for his failure to support his “auto bailout,” a bailout that ultimately saved over one million jobs in America and kept the auto industry from relocating to China. Obama said of his opponent at the the debate Monday evening of Romney that “He even tried to rewrite the history of his position on rescuing the automobile industry. Whoa!”
That was met with laughter and then he added with a bit of snark, “If I only knew he was ready to help back then. If I only knew.”
What is much more serious is that Mitt Romney has an Ohio problem and it is simple. On November 18, 2008, Romney wrote a piece in the New York Times titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” Romney said in the piece that essentially advocated that Detroit should disappear. By extension, that would have meant Ohio too.
During the Republican primaries Mitt Romney repeatedly defended his position that he should “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”
The President put it simply in appearances in Ohio that some “folks said we should ‘Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,’ when they said we should walk away from an industry that supports one in eight jobs in Ohio.”
The President continued, “I said, we’re not going to go that way. I bet on American workers, and three years later, the American auto industry has come roaring back with nearly 250,000 jobs.”
In that piece in the New York Times, Romney said many things, none of them friendly to the auto industry, the workers of the auto industry and the people of the great state of Ohio. Romney wrongly predicted that if the “auto bailout” went through that “you can kiss the automotive industry goodbye.”
Mitt Romney was wrong. Here is what he wrote.
If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.
Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.
But President Obama did indeed write the automobile industry a check. This is an issue that the state of Ohio will not soon forget. The state of Ohio is showing its appreciation with their support.
The state of Ohio is ground zero in the race for the White House as President Obama, Mitt Romney, Vice President Joe Biden, and Paul Ryan jet in and out of the state trying to garner the few undecided voters.
Ultimately, this election is about jobs. President Obama stuck out his political neck to save the auto industry from extinction. The beneficiaries: the people of the great state of Ohio.
For Team Romney, wishful thinking does not make it so.
Send John Presta an email and your story ideas or suggestions, johnpresta@att.net.
John is the author of an award-winning book, the 2010 Winner of the USA National Best Book award for African-American studies, published by The Elevator Group Mr. and Mrs. Grassroots: How Barack Obama, Two Bookstore Owners, and 300 Volunteers did it. Also available an eBook on Amazon. John is also a member of the Society of Midland Authors and is a book reviewer of political books for the New York Journal of Books
