While Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich savage each other and just as Rick Santorum releases his own hard-hitting ad against Gingrich, Karl Rove’s nonprofit Crossroads GPS keeps the focus on Barack Obama with a $500,000 weeklong ad buy on national cable.

As Ed wrote when the group released its first ad, anybody interested to defeat Obama needs to keep the attacks on his crony capitalism coming. It’s not just that it’s an easy target. His tendency to reward insiders is also revealing of his overall preference for government interference. This is a president who by his actions suggests he thinks government — especially in the energy sector — is a better way to coordinate supply and demand than the free market.

What’s more: He’s already proved that he’s willing to double down on that. His first campaign ad attempted to defend Solyndra — and, in his State of the Union address, he reiterated his commitment to fostering clean energy companies. (Note that his first concern is not affordability or even energy independence, the achievement of which could arguably be classified as a national security goal. While nobody wants “dirty” energy, most folks don’t have the luxury to prioritize environmental concerns over all other concerns when it comes to picking an energy source.)

Point is: The president is clearly concerned about how the attacks on his ties to Solyndra might affect him in the general election — yet he still won’t back off his idea that “companies like Solyndra” are the “true engine of economic growth” and that a government leg-up to these companies is somehow justified. That means he’ll seek to defend himself — but have no defense.