Mitt Romney's idea of being in touch is telling out-of-work Floridians that he's "also unemployed"
Mitt Romney keeps on
spouting nonsense:
"This is a president who thinks America is doing better," Romney told more than 200 people who crammed into a restaurant porch trying to escape heavy rains and lightning. "He should go out and talk to the 24 million Americans who are out of work or stopped looking for work or are unemployed."
First of all, America
is doing better than it was under President Bush. During Bush's eight years in office, we lost 646,000 private sector jobs. When President Obama was inaugurated, the economy was in free fall. And
if it weren't for the stimulus, we'd have hit ended up with another Great Depression. Today the economy is growing: More jobs have been created in the past 12 months than in any 12 month stretch in the past five years.
Second, President Obama has never suggested that we should go home and declare victory. When Republicans in Congress were whining about him wanting to give a speech during a GOP presidential debate, he was busy putting together a jobs plan because he wanted to accelerate the recovery, and he's continuing to push Congress to take steps to bolster growth.
Third, not only has Mitt Romney himself acknowledged the the economy is getting better (and that President Obama is not to blame for the recession), but Romney also publicly advocated a massive stimulus. He might not have supported every single thing in the stimulus President Obama signed into law, but most of what ended up being enacted were things that he had advocated in December 2008.
(Also worth noting: Romney, like the Obama economic team, didn't fully understand the devastating impact the financial collapse was having on the economy. He warned that unless Republicans signed a stimulus into law by mid-December, 500,000 jobs would be lost between then Obama's inauguration. A stimulus wasn't signed, and roughly one million private sector jobs were lost in those five weeks.)
Finally, given that Mitt Romney told a group of out-of-work Floridians that he considers himself to be among the unemployed, he really ought not be giving President Obama lectures about how to stay in touch. The next thing you know Mitt Romney is going to say that President Obama is trying to end Medicare as we know it. Oh wait. He already is.