One of the largest labor unions in the country is going on the offensive against Mitt Romney, airing an ad in Ohio that slams the former Massachusetts governor for his opposition to the auto bailout.
The new ad by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees attacks Romney for abandoning auto workers, but supporting a bailout for banks.
“Romney would have turned his back on us in the depths of the recession,” the ad warns. “But he supported giving the banks billions in bailouts? That’s Mitt’s world. Why would we want to live in it?”
Video of the AFSCME ad is below:
As Greg Sargent points out, the ad suggests that Romney’s “let Detroit go bankrupt” argument may haunt him long after Tuesday’s Michigan primary.
It’s unclear whether this message will have resonance among GOP primary voters. But the ad represents a bet that the GOP primary has forced Romney so far to the right on the auto-bailout — requiring him to go through comical contortions to pretend it wasn’t a big success — that it’s worth branding him hard with it now, among swing voters in states other than Michigan.
And it’s another glimpse of how the pro-Obama forces will use Romney’s opposition to the bailout to paint him as a heartless capitalist — and point to his profound wrongness about it as Exhibit A in Campaign 2012’s larger ideological argument over government’s role in interfering with the free market to protect and create American jobs.
There is some evidence that the attacks against Romney are working; recent polls show him trailing President Obama in Michigan by a wide margin.
