Romney earns 'Lie of the Year' honors, courtesy of PolitiFact

Former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney would’ve preferred to win the presidency rather than earn PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” honor.

The political fact-checking website shared the news Wednesday that Romney’s campaign advertisement claiming President Barack Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China” was “obviously false,” PoliticFact’s Angie Drobnic Holan wrote.

Romney said in an Ohio campaign stop that Jeep was headed to China, citing a story by Bloomberg News , but Chrysler swiftly refuted the claim. The automaker only considered launching new Jeep manufacturing in China but had no plans to move U.S. jobs to China.

“Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China,” said Chrysler Chairman and CEO Sergio Marchionne’s in a statement .

Chrysler’s communication department released a statement in October supporting the Bloomberg News report as “clear and accurate.”

PolitiFact hinted in the analysis the false claim was a contributing factor in Romney’s loss to Obama, particularly in Ohio.

But PolitiFact did not absolve the Obama campaign of any wrongdoing, either.

“Their (Obama campaign) TV ads distorted Romney’s positions on abortion and immigration to make them seem more extreme than they actually were. A pro-Obama super PAC even created an ad suggesting Romney was responsible for a woman’s death when her husband lost his job at a Bain-controlled company."