'Why talk about jobs when we can beat up on
the children of immigrants?' (Pool/Reuters)
So I just went through the
transcript of last night's debate to see what Rick Perry and Mitt Romney had to say about jobs. I came up almost bone dry: Between them, they only mentioned the words "job" or "jobs" six times—three times apiece.
Here's what each of them said, in the order in which they were delivered.
- PERRY: "Well, Rick Scott is sitting right over there, and he and I compete every day with trying to get jobs into our states."
- PERRY: "Well, you will see a more extensive jobs plan."
- ROMNEY: "I happen to believe that to create jobs it helps to have had a job, and I have — and having had a job in small business and in big business, I know what you have to do is make America the most attractive place in the world for business, and that means our corporate tax rates, our employer tax rates have to be competitive."
- ROMNEY: "I know how jobs come, how jobs go."
- ROMNEY: "You've got people who are sitting at that same table filling out job application forms, knowing that there are hundreds of other people that are doing the same thing for the same job."
- PERRY: "Americans want a leader who's got a proven record of job creation. Number one, we get rid of Obamacare. Secondly, we pull back all of those regulations that are job-killing today, whether it's Dodd-Frank or whether it's the EPA."
I would have made a word cloud, but there wouldn't have been enough moisture to fog a bathroom mirror.