Obama allies tie Mitt Romney to Big Oil

A super PAC supporting President Obama is out with an ad in eight key general election states that hits back at administration critics and suggests former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is in bed with oil companies.

“Who’s behind this ad smearing President Obama?” the narrator asks, showing a shot of a spot from the American Energy Alliance attacking Obama over high gas prices. “Big Oil, that’s who.”

Oil industry profits, the narrator adds, are “going right into Mitt Romney’s campaign. Big oil executives have pledged $200 million to help him. Mitt Romney’s pledged to protect their record profits – and their billions in special tax breaks too.”

A recent Democratic National Committee Web video hit the same “big oil attack ad,” saying, “when you see this ad, remember who paid for it, and what they bought,” over a shot of Romney.

Their goal: Taking an anonymous group and tying it to figures both partisan (the GOP frontrunner) and unpopular (“Big Oil.”)

The American Energy Alliance has ties to the billionaire Koch brothers, who have pledged to spend hundreds of millions to defeat Democrats in 2012.

However, as our Factchecker said at the time, only a small percent of Romney’s campaign funds come from the oil industry and there is no proof that he had anything to do with this ad campaign.

The spot will start airing in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia later this week. But the group did not release numbers on the size of the buy, and Priorities USA has struggled to raise money.