The latest television ad from President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign airing in Virginia  features another attack on Republican Mitt Romney’s record running the private equity firm Bain Capital.

The 30-second ad, debuting today in Virginia and eight other states, continues a line of attack that Obama’s campaign initiated last week when Romney campaigned in Salem. The Obama ad asserts that, under Romney’s leadership, Bain owned companies that were “pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs to low-wage countries.”

The claim is pegged to a June 21 Washington Post article, disputed by Romney’s campaign, about Bain investing in companies that relocated jobs held by American workers to other countries. The new ad is part of the Obama campaign’s ongoing effort to undercut Romney’s argument that his business experience gives him the know-how to create jobs and revive a stagnant economy. The independent FactCheck.org found flaws in the first wave of Obama ads on the outsourcing issue, finding no evidence that Romney shipped jobs overseas while running Bain Capital.

The new Obama ad attempts to draw a contrast by playing up the president’s efforts to rescue American auto makers and to provide tax incentives for companies that locate jobs in the U.S.

“Outsourcing versus insourcing: it matters,” an announcer says at the end of the ad.

When Obama’s campaign unveiled a Virginia-specific ad last week tagging Romney as a would-be “outsourcer-in-chief,” the Romney camp accused the president of trying to divert attention from his own record on jobs and the economy as the national unemployment rate hovers above 8 percent.

“Once again trying to divert attention from President Obama’s abysmal economic record, the Obama campaign continues to try to mislead voters with ads that independent fact checkers have repeatedly proven to be false,” the Romney camp said in an email this morning. “Just yesterday, FactCheck.org ‘reaffirm[ed their] conclusion’ that the Obama campaign’s attacks have no merit, saying their evidence is ‘weak or non-existent’ and their ads have ‘mislead.’”

– Michael Sluss