President Obama has been hitting hard on the ostensible success of his taxpayer-funded bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler in any way he can, touting the supposedly approaching comeback of American manufacturing due to his skillful “I bet on American workers” policies and bloviating about how that cold-hearted Mitt Romney would’ve simply let the American auto industry eat cake, or something. It’s been a big campaign theme in the all-important dead-heat battleground state of Ohio, and over the weekend, Team Romney hit back with this new television ad:

Last week, the news that Chrysler and its Italian parent Fiat are in talks to consider building Jeep plants in China caused some confusion in the media about the auto company actually shifting all Jeep production to China, which isn’t the case — and at an appearance in Ohio last week, it seems that Team Romney did seize on the news too fast by positing that U.S. production facilities might be jumping ship and heading overseas. However, this ad isn’t perpetuating that misrepresentation — I think it’s simply calling President Obama out on his intellectual inconsistency.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with global business, offshoring, international supply and distribution chains, etcetera — in fact, those things are all a boon to economic growth that make us all richer. The point is that Team Obama has made a point of tearing down global business generally and Mitt Romney specifically for the oh-so-heinous crimes of investing overseas, offshoring, et al. Then, it turns out that an auto company to which the president gifted a government-funded bailout as one of his “bets on America” and now constantly points to as a harbinger of American job creation, does plenty of those activities themselves.

Anyhow, if Team Obama really wants to start talking about honest representations of the auto bailouts, then they’ve got some serious ‘splainin’ to do of their own.