Republicans are looking Thursday to undercut President Obama's acceptance speech with a new website and online video commemorating the one-year anniversary of solar panel firm Solyndra's bankruptcy filing.
The green energy firm, initially touted by the president as an example of the success of his stimulus program, has since become a campaign liability. Republicans have said the plant's bankruptcy led to hundreds of job losses, and noted that Obama campaign donors had ties to the company.
"While the American people know they are not better off under President Obama, his Solyndra campaign donors are doing fine," said Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus in a statement. "People lost jobs and half a billion taxpayer dollars went to President Obama's campaign donors to serve the president's green energy pipe dream."
Priebus went on to argue that Solyndra's failure was evidence that Obama had not delivered on the change he promised in his 2008 address.
"President Obama talks a lot about being a new kind of president, but his Solyndra scandal is proof-positive that he's just a typical politician," the RNC chairman said. "Our country deserves a president who will be a steward of the country's treasury, not a free-spending liberal who puts his political cronies over the taxpayers."
In the video released by the RNC, troubling headlines about the firm are contrasted with a speech that Republican nominee Mitt Romney gave outside the company's shuttered factory, during which he decried the bankruptcy as the result of "crony capitalism."
An accompanying website chronicles the country's bankruptcy on a timeline, linking to embarrassing statements, internal emails and YouTube videos.
The Obama administration has defended the Department of Energy loans that helped fund the green energy company, arguing that inevitably, not all companies would succeed — but that an investment in green energy was important. Administration officials have also noted that the energy loan program began under the George W. Bush administration.
"I have confidence decisions were made based upon what's good for the American people," President Obama told reporters in October at a White House press conference.
"There were going to be some companies that did not work out; Solyndra was one of them."
Obama also told ABC News that "if we want to compete with China, which is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into this space ... we've got to make sure that our guys here in the United States of America at least have a shot."
