In his effort to challenge President Barack Obama's attacks on his jobs record, Mitt Romney has enlisted a surprising new surrogate: Hillary Clinton.
The Romney campaign quietly launched a new 30-second television ad Friday featuring footage of Clinton campaigning against Obama during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, in which she accused Obama of lying about her record.
"Shame on you, Barack Obama," Clinton says in the footage recycled in the Romney spot.
The Romney ad uses the Clinton footage to back up a recent Washington Post Fact Checker item that said a recent Obama ad accusing Romney of outsourcing jobs overseas while he was governor of Massachusetts was "misleading, unfair and untrue."
"But that's Barack Obama," a narrator in the Romney ad declares. "He also attacked Hillary Clinton with vicious lies."
The Clinton footage comes from a campaign event held just before the Ohio primary in 2008, when Clinton attacked Obama for mailers she said mischaracterized her positions on health care reform and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
"He continues to spend millions of dollars perpetuating falsehoods," Clinton said at the time—footage that has been recycled in Romney's latest ads to cast doubt on Obama's claims about Romney.
Clinton, who is now Obama's secretary of state, has not remarked on the ad, and her spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Unlike other ads, the Romney campaign did not publicly announce its latest campaign spot, which was first reported by Politico's Maggie Haberman. The ad was uploaded Friday morning to Romney's YouTube channel.
A Romney spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment about the ad, including where it is airing or how much the TV ad buy is for. But a Republican source tells CNN the Romney campaign reserved $2 million in airtime in seven key battleground states, including Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia.