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There is no distance penalty for intentional grounding to save yardage.
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I think "spot of the foul" potentially makes it a distance penalty. Had it said previous spot, like on a first touching by player OOB, you'd be right. The only reason the ball is brought back to the spot is because we flagged it (obviously). So we have a foul, a penalty, and a probable loss of yardage due to the foul. I think one way to look at distance is to compare what it would have been had the flag not been thrown.
However, I get the point and I think if this has come up with the committee, they probably viewed it as you do.
I still think there's enough potential confusion to make an editorial change.
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What is the intent of that wording?
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The problem is that you could look at that in many different ways. Think macro for a second: is the intent of the rules committee, except in specified situations, to make ANY loss of yardage due to penalty no more than half the distance to the goal line? If so, there needs to be an specified exception.
The definition of clipping already includes an exception regarding the runner, but the specific rule prohibiting clipping includes that reference again. Thus, there's a bit of redundancy already in the book.