Here's a shock: Once again, Mitt Romney is making stuff up and, once again, I have the first hand Michigan experience to prove it.
Romney responded to the effective attacks on his outsourcing past by saying, "If there's an outsourcer in chief, it's the President of the United States. Not the guy who is running to replace him."
Are you kidding me? They even have a website up! It's the old 'I'm rubber -- you're glue' strategy -- we saw that strategy deployed in the swiftboating of John Kerry.
Remember when Karl Rove turned around the criticism of George Bush's military service and attacked John Kerry -- the respected war hero -- as a coward? That strategy worked, so now Romney is doing it too.
Whatever the Obama team says about him, he turns around and says the same thing back, only without substance.
How do I know there's no substance in the Obama outsourcer lie? Because one of the Republican Party's key examples they cite is LG Chem, a South Korea based company, which received some federal grant money. Believe me, I know this story better than anyone.
You'd think Romney's billion-dollar campaign could afford to be more careful with their lies and omissions. What their attacks don't say is that, in exchange for the federal grant, LG Chem agreed to locate its battery plant in the U.S. and hire American workers to make advanced batteries for the American auto industry. What they don't say is that LG Chem put its new factory in the state hardest hit by the recession -- Michigan -- and is hiring 400 Michigan workers to make the batteries, and even more U.S. workers to construct the plant.
As governor, I went to South Korea to lure LG Chem to open the plant in Holland, Michigan. I was there two years ago with President Obama for the plant's groundbreaking. What they don't say is that this factory is touted as the pride of a region that was devastated by the loss of factories under the George W. Bush administration because Bush had no manufacturing policy.
Now, Mitt, if you want to say that international companies coming to America to employ Americans for products manufactured for sale in America are not welcome here -- well good luck in November and then in your next failed presidential campaign. And, by the way, you'll want to whisper your no-luring-foreign-investment-in-America policy to your fellow Republican governors, like potential Vice President Chris Christie, who just returned from a trip offering Israeli companies tax breaks for jobs.
All of our nation's governors are smart to do anything to create good paying jobs for their people. And so was President Obama. So, sure, under President Obama, some stimulus money went to international companies -- to create American jobs in America! In contrast, under you, Mitt Romney, American jobs went overseas, and a lot of money came back, right into your offshore bank account.
Cross-posted at "The War Room" blog. Follow Jennifer Granholm on Facebook and Twitter and "The War Room" on Facebook and Twitter. "The War Room with Jennifer Granholm" airs weeknights at 9/8c on Current TV.