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Former Congressman Allen West on Sunday (R-FL) said that an admission by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that it had improperly scrutinized tea party groups was part of a wider conspiracy that included President Barack Obama's administration forcing Republican-owned car dealerships to be shut down during the auto bailout in 2009.

Fox News host Alisyn Camerota asked West if he had any indications that the recently-revealed IRS practice of examining whether tea party groups were abusing their tax-exempt status was not limited to "rogue, low-level IRS agents in the Cincinnati office who thought that they were going to personally stick it to the tea party."

"Well, of course," the tea party-favorite Republican declared. "The most important thing we need to come to understand is your First Amendment rights is you have the right to petition the government for redress of your grievances. If we start to have a government that is targeting certain groups for their political ideology because they don't believe it is in concert with their beliefs, this is Orwellian, to put it in the least manner."

"We've got to come back and have hearings on this," he continued. "This is something that is criminal."

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The Fox News morning show Fox & Friends on Friday declared that a law in Michigan that weakens unions was a "Victory for Capitalism!"

On Thursday, the Republican-controlled state legislature in Michigan had quickly pushed through a new measure that would make the birthplace of the country's labor movement a right-to-work state, crippling unions by prohibiting requirements that employees join or pay dues.

"Yesterday, the legislature of both of houses passed a law making Michigan the 24th right to work state, bans mandatory union dues," Fox News co-host Steve Doocy reported while a graphic on the screen read, "Victory for Capitalism!"

"If you work for the UAW, you work for Chrysler, Ford, places like that -- there are a lot of people who are upset," Doocy noted.

"But that's where it's going," co-host Brian Kilmeade asserted. "If you want to know what's good about our economy, look at Indiana, look at Ohio and now look what's happening over in Florida [with anti-union laws] and that's what they want to do in Michigan. It's governors making tough choices."

Hundreds of protesters turned out on Thursday, briefly shutting down the Michigan state Capitol Building and causing State Police to use pepper spray and arrest several demonstrators. But lawmakers jammed through the legislation and Gov. Rick Snyder has promised to sign the bill after final passage, which is expected before the Republican majority is reduced from a 64-46 margin to a 59-51 margin in January.

(h/t: Media Matters)

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After Meet the Press host David Gregory asks House Majority Eric Cantor about Mitt Romney's dishonest ad where he claims that Jeep is planning on sending American jobs over to China, when Romney himself believes it's a good business model "to outsource in order to make companies competitive," Cantor initially tries to hedge and claims Romney would be the one who would care about plants opening here in America. He also cites an endorsement by Lee Iacocca as some sort of proof that he cares about these things and wants to get the economy back on track.

When Gregory tries to pin him down and asks him if the ad is deceptive, Cantor pulls the "I havent' seen the ad" dodge and tells Gregory it's not running in Virginia. He then goes on to attack President Obama as not being willing to work across the aisle, because we all know Mr. 800-Plus Vetoes Romney would be much more willing to reach across the aisle if he's elected.

And naturally we got no follow up or push back from David Gregory on any of that. If it's Sunday, it's meet the Republicans and their unfettered talking points. I'm wondering, if Cantor was telling the truth about not seeing the ad, why is he being sent out there as a surrogate for Mitt Romney? I don't believe for one minute he hasn't either seen it, or read about what's in it though. Yeah, he has no idea what's in it, but he knows it hasn't aired in his state yet.

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Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) on Monday said that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's ad suggesting that Chrysler was moving Jeep production to China was "100 percent correct and accurate" -- even though fact checkers have determined the claim is false.

"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," the Republican presidential candidate told supporters in Defiance, Ohio last week.

In an ad released on Sunday, the campaign repeated the claim, saying that Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians, who are going to build Jeeps in China."

The candidate apparently picked up idea that Chrysler was going to move all production to China from conservative bloggers who twisted an otherwise-accurate story from Bloomberg News.

And even Gualberto Ranieri, Chrysler’s vice president of communications, has said that the claims are just not true.

"Despite clear and accurate reporting, the take has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. workforce," Ranieri wrote on Oct. 25. "It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats."

"A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments," he added.

After reviewing the ad on Sunday, BuzzFeed's McKay Coppins tweeted: "There's really no good explanation or excuse for it. Mitt Romney's Jeep ad is misleading. Full stop."

"Ads that mislead or stretch the truth are nothing new for presidential campaigns," Business Insider's Grace Wyler explained. "But this ad — and Romney's comments last week — has prompted harsh criticism from the media, likely because it strikes reporters as not only disingenuous, but irresponsible. For Romney to suggest that the livelihoods of specific voters — namely workers at the Jeep plant in Toledo — are in danger in order to win an election comes across to many as the type of fear-mongering that no one wants in a president. "

During an interview on Monday, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell asked Chaffetz if the Romney campaign should stop running the ad.

"No!" Chaffetz replied. "It's 100 percent correct and accurate. The Romney campaign stands behind it."

For its part, President Barack Obama's campaign released an ad on Monday calling Romney's assertion an outright "lie."

"When the auto industry faced collapse, Mitt Romney turned his back," the Obama ad says. "Even the conservative Detroit News criticized Romney for his ‘wrong-headedness’ on the bailout."

"And now, after Romney’s false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China, Chrysler itself has refuted Romney’s lie."

Speaking to supporters in Youngstown, Ohio on Monday, Vice President Joe Biden said Romney's ad was "absolutely, patently false" and he had "never seen anything like that."

"Have they no shame?" the vice president wondered. "Romney will say anything, absolutely anything to win it seems."

(h/t: Political Carnival)

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Apparently President Obama is now capable of time travel, since wingnut Rep. Marsha Blackburn accused him of harming American Motors, while defending Willard's big lie he keeps telling about Jeep moving all of its production to China.

Congresswoman Accuses Obama Of ‘Harming’ Auto Company That Went Defunct In 1988:

A Republican congresswoman accused the Obama administration of promulgating regulations that are undermining job creation at an auto manufacturer that has been defunct since 1988. She was responding to a question on Monday about Mitt Romney’s dishonest claims regarding Jeep moving its production overseas.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) dodged a question about Romney’s debunked Jeep claims and instead attacked the Obama administration for issuing regulations that are harming workers at American Motors Corporation, a company once headed by George Romney. AMC was sold to Chrysler during the Ronald Reagan administration and its brands were then discontinued:

CHIRS JENSING (HOST): Let me ask you about some of the things going on on the campaign trail, and there’s a controversy about Mitt Romney telling voters that jeep is going to move production to China. According to the company that’s entirely false. Is he lying about that?

BLACKBURN: Oh, well, I don’t know. I haven’t talked with with the campaign staff about that. I will say this. For workers in the auto industry, across the board, whether it is GM, whether it’s Nissan, whether it’s American Motors, individuals are very concerned about the impact of regulation that the EPA and OSHA and other federal agencies are heaping on our manufacturers.

It seems Romney and his surrogates don't care how low they have to go or whose intelligence they have to insult if they think it will help them win this election. Let's hope this headline from Business Insider is correct on the consequences for that -- Mitt Romney Has Been Telling A Huge Whopper About The Auto Industry, And His Campaign Is Finally Paying For It.

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Here we go again with Willard telling about his thousandth or so lie out on the campaign trail, but this time we find out that apparently badly sourced right wing blogs are his fact checking department. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

Romney repeats false claim of Jeep outsourcing to China; Chrysler refutes story:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney repeated a false claim Thursday night that Chrysler Group may move all Jeep vehicle production to China, drawing criticism from the Obama campaign, which said the Michigan native had blatantly skewed a news wire story.

Romney’s comments came the same day that the Free Press reported that 1,100 new Chrysler workers will begin making the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs at a plant in Detroit next week.

“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,” Romney said during a rally in Defiance, Ohio, before 12,000 cheering supporters, according to several reports. “I will fight for every good job in America, I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair, America will win.

Romney apparently was referencing conservative bloggers who misrepresented a Bloomberg story from Monday that discussed Chrysler’s decision to consider starting Jeep production in China, the world’s largest new-vehicle market.

That story, while accurate, sparked a raft of other stories and blogs that incorrectly concluded that Chrysler might close plants or move Jeep production from the U.S. to China.

Gualberto Ranieri, Chrysler’s vice president of communications, criticized those stories Thursday even before Romney made his comments.

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Jason Linkins in his weekly Sunday Talking Heads live blog, did a nice job of summing this portion of Ed Gillespie's appearance on Fox News Sunday up, where Gillespie was trying to explain Mitt Romney's opinion on the bailout of the auto industry:

Wallace moves to Romney's opposition to the auto industry rescue. Again, Wallace has done his homework, pointing out that the current Republican governor of Michigan supported the rescue and has pointed out that Romney's weird explanation for how it came to be that he simultaneously opposed and supported this rescue does not make sense -- Rommey says he wanted a "managed bankruptcy" and has insisted from time to time that what Obama did was not a managed bankruptcy, only to say on alternate weeks that it was a "managed bankruptcy" and that Romney will "take a lot of credit for it."

There's only one salient difference between Romney and Obama's position -- Romney seems to think that private money should have been used and was available to manage the bankruptcy. The White House position was that private money would have OBVIOUSLY been preferable, but there was, as you could imagine, nobody who was particularly hot to pony up the scratch. So the federal government did, after the executives successfully jumped through a bunch of hoops. If we're being honest here, Romney played his hand back when it was still uncertain that the auto rescue would work, his gamble didn't pay off, and now he's having to spit a bunch of circuitous garbage about it to keep from simply admitting he was wrong.

It seems to me that he'd actually be better off if he just conceded the Detroit bailout to Obama, like Michigan's governor has, and just move to another point of critique. But in for a penny, I guess?

Gillespie doesn't have much of an answer, except to say that there was a debate and many people had different point of view. Gillespie says that a managed bankruptcy was Romney's idea. Wallace says, sure, but not with public money. Gillespie says that it's still a managed bankruptcy. Wallace counters, saying that doing it Romney's way would have actually led to a Chapter 7 liquidation. And around and around. "I understand that is an opinion," Gillespie says. He says that Romney's "belief" is that a private bailout would have been better. He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.

Gillespie eventually gets around to being slightly more honest -- Romney believes that the bondholders who made terrible investments in these companies should have been bailed out ahead of the middle class people who built the cars. That's really the only worthwhile thing to remember from this discussion.

Transcript via Fox below the fold.

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No, really, he did. Those were his exact words. Video via WEWS in Cleveland.

(AP) EUCLID, Ohio — Campaigning in the backyard of America’s auto industry, Mitt Romney re-ignited the bailout debate by suggesting he deserves “a lot of credit” for the recent successes of the nation’s largest car companies.

That claims comes in spite of his stance that Detroit should have been allowed to go bankrupt.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee told a Cleveland television station on Monday that President Barack Obama followed his lead when he ushered auto companies through a managed bankruptcy soon after taking office.

“I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy, and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet,” Romney said in an interview inside a Cleveland-area auto parts maker. “So, I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry has come back.”

Romney has repeatedly argued that Obama ultimately took his advice on the auto industry’s woes of 2008 and 2009. But he went further on Monday by saying he deserves credit for its ultimate turnaround.

The course Romney advocated differed greatly from the one that was ultimately taken. GM and Chrysler went into bankruptcy on the strength of a massive bailout that Romney opposed. Neither Republican President George W. Bush nor Democratic President Barack Obama believed the automakers would have survived without that backup from taxpayers.

Romney opposed taxpayer help.

Shameless. Completely and utterly without shame. The guy whose NY Times op-ed Let Detroit Go Bankrupt set the standard for Republican obstinance is now trying to claim credit.

The Obama campaign called it "a new low in dishonesty" and called on Romney to "have the courage and integrity" to admit he was wrong. Yeah, like that'll happen.

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This one seems really dumb as the National Football League seems to be saying Chrysler infringed on its copyright of "Halftime." Another odd thing about this is that there are plenty of other versions still to be found at YouTube, but the official one at the YouTube Chrysler channel was taken down.

(EDIT: It's working now, probably after someone with some clout rectified the situation.)

Marketwatch has some details and reaction to the ad.

The Clint Eastwood ad during the Super Bowl — catch it here because it’s been blocked by YouTube after the NFL alleged a copyright infringement — could be viewed as a simple celebration of the recovery of bankrupt Chrysler. But the political overtones were easy to see as well: “Halftime in America” could be interpreted as a rallying call for a second term for President Barack Obama, who pushed ahead with a bailout of Chrysler and General Motors (read more on GM’s financial results on WSJ.com) despite objections from Republicans, including his likely presidential opponent, Mitt Romney.

“Saving the America Auto Industry: Something Eminem and Clint Eastwood can agree on,” tweeted Dan Pfeiffer, the White House spokesman. Added David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist: “Powerful spot.” Filmmaker Michael Moore was a bit more direct (and apologies for the Twitterese): “Your sermon seemed 2 b a call 2 give O his ‘second half.’”

The former Republican mayor of Carmel, Calif. wasn’t universally loved. “WTH? Did I just see Clint Eastwood fronting an auto bailout ad???” said Michelle Malkin, the conservative blogger. “I think Clint Eastwood’s credentials as a conservative have been overrated for some time,” added David Limbaugh, the brother of Rush and himself a conservative author.

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Ed Schultz slams Hugh Hewitt for his article at the Washington Examiner: Just say no to Government Motors and Obamacars. Give 'em hell Ed!