Ishtar 2? Clint Eastwood stars in new ad for Mitt Romney (VIDEO)

Nobody in Hollywood has been clamoring to make “Ishtar 2.” Or re-imagine “Howard the Duck.” Why? Because they were BOMBS, that’s why.

So why in the name of “Gigli” would Mitt Romney’s campaign — er, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads superPAC – dust off Clint Eastwood to make a campaign commercial touting Mitt? All it does is remind people of the great Eastwood’s royal bomb at the RNC just two months ago. Yes, his ad-libbed “conversation” with a chair.

But in politics, attention spans are Tweet-short these days. So here’s Clint coughing up his full-throat-of-gravel Clintyness backing Mitt. If this ad looks and smells familiar, it’s because it sounds JUST LIKE Clint’s highly-touted Super Bowl “Halftime in America” commercial for Chrysler, which many thought came off like an endorsement for ….HORRORS!….Obama. You remember that spot. It’s the one where Clint says that “we all pulled together and Motor City is fighting again.” Indeed it is, no thanks to Romney’s tough love prescription for Detroit. But those are the facts, and the Romney camp has said its campaign won’t be “dictated” by what fact-checkers say.

Despite Clint’s appearance for more on how the 2012 campaign just doesn’t have the pop culture wallop that 2008 did, check out our story that appeared Wednesday.

Here’s the Mitt ad:

Here’s Clint’s Super Bowl ad:

And just for laughs….grimaces?….here’s Clint doing some serious #Eastwooding while chatting up some furniture at the RNC. As former Romney and Meg Whitman adviser Mike Murphy tweeted: “Note to file: Actors need a script.”

Of course, this sets up a battle of the Hollywood voiceovers. Here’s Morgan Freeman — Clint’s co-star in “Million Dollar Baby” and known more famously in our house as The Easy Reader on “The Electric Company” — somber-toning it for President Obama. Must make for some fun on-set chats:

Joe Garofoli