Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) made a surprise visit to Fremont, Calif., today to visit the former headquarters of the Solyndra solar energy company to blast President Obama for a green energy investment program that he said was built on "crony capitalism."

The visit comes two days after Romney officially clinched the GOP presidential nomination and more than two years since Obama traveled to the same facility to declare that "the true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra."

Solyndra filed for bankruptcy in August despite receiving about $535 million in taxpayer funding in the form of a Department of Energy loan guarantee. Ever since, Republicans have been working to highlight the connections among the Obama administration, his campaign donors and DOE loan guarantee recipients.

In the case of Solyndra, Republicans made much of the company's connection to George Kaiser, an Obama bundler and frequent White House visitor who is involved in Argonaut Ventures, one of Solyndra's investors. They've also pointed out that campaign fundraiser Steven Spinner was a key loan adviser for Energy Secretary Steven Chu even while Spinner's wife's law firm represented companies that applied for loans, including Solyndra.

Romney today called the Solyndra building a testament to "an enormous conflict of interest on the part of the president."

The Romney campaign clearly sees Solyndra as a way to turn the tables on the Obama campaign's ongoing assault on Romney's past work at Bain Capital. In an attempt to undermine Romney's claim to be a job creator, the Obama campaign has charged that Romney's private equity deals at Bain destroyed jobs and shut down businesses, all while lining Romney's pockets.

But Romney said today that the Solyndra debacle shows that the president has a warped view of free enterprise.

"If the business failed, as it did [with Solyndra], it's the taxpayers that get stuck with losing a half a billion dollars," Romney said. "So it's heads and his cronies win, and tails and the taxpayers lose."

Romney's campaign didn't disclose the speech location until after he arrived, and reporters on the Romney campaign bus didn't even find out about the event until after they boarded the bus.

"The reason for keeping it quiet is because we knew if word got out, that Solyndra would do everything in their power and the Obama administration would do everything in their power to stop us from having this news conference," a Romney aide said in a briefing on the bus, according to ABC News. "But taxpayers made a substantial investment in Solyndra, there are serious questions about what happened at Solyndra, why that investment was selected, what happened to that money."

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee released a new Web video today that not only hits Obama for using taxpayer money to make green energy bets but also blasts him for making lousy choices when it came to the companies he decided to invest in.

The latest ad features a montage of news reports citing the various red flags that were raised about Solyndra before it filed for bankruptcy last year.

The idea that the government ignored warning signs when it came to Solyndra is not a new one.

At the height of the Solyndra hearings on Capitol Hill last year, Republicans made much of the poor credit ratings that Solyndra received from the private sector before it was approved for a loan. They also criticized the decision early last year to double down on Solyndra in the form of a controversial loan restructuring that kept the company afloat for an additional six months. According to documents released by Republicans during their Solyndra probe, that restructuring effort, which put even more taxpayer money at risk, was opposed by some officials at the Office of Management and Budget who thought it was unlikely that Solyndra could be rescued.

Democrats have argued that Congress created the DOE's loan program in 2005 specifically to support high-potential green energy efforts that were unlikely to get funding from the private sector. Chu has said he approved the restructuring of the Solyndra loan because he believed at the time that it gave the company the best chance of succeeding.

Along with the video, the RNC today also released an update of its Solyndra briefing memo, titled "The Solyndra File: Corruption at the Heart of the Failed Obama Economic Strategy," which it first released just two weeks after Solyndra filed for bankruptcy.