With another national cable buy today, the Karl Rove-backed conservative advocacy group Crossroads GPS has now spent $1 million in a little over two months on ads aimed at ensuring that the Solyndra scandal remains a thorn in President Obama's side as he heads into his re-election battle.

The newest Solyndra commercial from the 501(c)(4), which is a sister organization to the well-funded political action committee American Crossroads, comes less than three weeks after another conservative interest group with ties to the Koch brothers launched a $6 million television ad campaign blasting Obama over the solar energy company that received over half a billion dollars through a Department of Energy loan guarantee program.

SPECIAL REPORT

Solyndra, a solar manufacturer that was given a $535 million loan guarantee and touted by the White House as a model for the clean energy economy, has filed for bankruptcy. E&E examines how it got there and what it means. Click here to read the report.

Today's ad -- which will air for a week on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC at a cost of $500,000 -- opens by noting that Obama promised that his administration's investment in a clean energy economy would result in hundreds of thousands of jobs.

"Then he gave his political backers billions," a narrator says.

The ad then flashes headlines from last year's FBI raid on Solyndra's headquarters in the wake of the company's bankruptcy filing.

"A big government fiasco, infused with politics at every level. $500 million to Solyndra, now bankrupt."

The ad also references Nevada Geothermal Power Inc., another struggling company that was backed by DOE's loan program and received support from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

"Laid off workers forgotten. Typical Washington," the narrator says. "Tell President Obama we need jobs, not more insider deals."

In a strategy memo that was released along with the ad, Crossroads GPS President Steven Law said that Obama's defense of his administration's investments in clean energy during last week's State of the Union represents a crucial moment in the debate on the government's role in the larger economic conversation (Greenwire, Jan. 25).

"President Obama views his Solyndra economy as a success -- so much so that he advocated doubling down on it in his State of the Union speech," Law wrote. "He rationalizes the heavy losses that taxpayers will bear ... and simply ignores the sweetheart deals, influence-peddling, incompetence and obsession with photo-ops that define his personally designed economy."

Law argued that the American economy has always been a place where "know-how" was the pathway to prosperity and growth.

"President Obama's Solyndra economy would replace that quintessential American model with a government-centered system in which 'know-who' automatically trumps 'know-how,'" he wrote.

The new ad comes as the Obama campaign has stepped up its defense of the president's clean energy investments and begun pushing back on recent Solyndra attacks.

The campaign made Solyndra and the future of clean energy the subject of its first television ad last month (Greenwire, Jan. 19).

And top Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod has been on a mini-media tour in the past week to talk about the issue.

"I applaud the president for doing things that try and encourage clean energy in this country," Axelrod said in an interview on "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "We're going to double renewable energy use in this country over the course of four years."

In that interview, Axelrod also dismissed any comparisons between Obama's investment in Solyndra and bankruptcies that occurred at companies that were supported by GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney when he headed Bain Capital. Democrats believe Romney's work at Bain will be a key general election issue if he wins the GOP nomination.

In an appearance on a California green business news program last week, Axelrod said the best way to defend against attacks over Solyndra is to be candid about the reason it received a loan in the first place.

"We knew when we made investments in clean energy technology that some would do well and others would not," Axelrod said. "That's the nature of this ... these are speculative investments. And that's the reason why they needed some nudging from the government in order to blossom. ... I'm very certain that we're going to look back at the seeds that have been planted during this period and we will say that it has made a big difference for the country in a positive way."