Since Obama is hitting the auto-bailout theme pretty hard in the manufacturing-heavy and still up-in-the-presidential-air state of Ohio, the Left got into quite the tizzy with one of Romney’s attempts to puncture the inflated narrative, with fact-checkers and pundits crying foul. Matthews summarizes the Jeep/China drama at the start of his segment:

Brit Hume summed up the real situation in one succinct tweet:

Romney Jeep ad is factually accurate. Critics are attacking what they say it implies. Fair enough, but don’t call it fact-checking.

— Brit Hume (@brithume) October 31, 2012

While it is true that Romney did misstate the facts in that first stump speech in Ohio, the Jeep ad itself is factually correct, and more than anything merely serves to point out that President Obama gave a taxpayer-funded bailout to a company that does practice offshoring — to which Obama has repeatedly professed opposition in principle (well, to outsourcing, anyway, but I digress). Matthews tries to argue that the Jeep production that Chrysler is thinking of creating in China would be for Jeeps that will be sold in China, but as his guest former RNC chairman Michael Steele points out, hello — exports, anyone? American workers can make even more money by shipping products abroad as well as selling them domestically.

Anyways, there is definitely a heavy stench of desperation hanging over this election, but the wind isn’t blowing from the Romney camp.