Falling apart. Greg Sargent over at WaPo catches this Team Rmoney bit of reasoning . . .
You really couldn’t make this one up if you tried.
The Romney campaign is out with a new press release blasting Obama for presiding over a “net” loss in jobs. As I’ve been saying far too often, this metric is bogus, because it factors in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs the economy was hemorrhaging when Obama took office, before his policies took effect.
But this time, there’s an intriguing new twist in the Romney campaign’s argument.
In the same release attacking Obama over “net” job loss, the Romney camp also defends Romney’s jobs record as Governor of Massachusetts by pointing out ... that Romney inherited a state economy that was losing jobs when he took office.
Seriously.
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
It only counts if you are a Republican. That is the basis of the entire Romney campaign, hope voters suffer Romnesia about Bush/Cheney's Presidency and the state they left the country in, blame everything on Obama, avoid any reporters questions unless it is Fox and whine that Romney's Governor record shouldn't be scrutinized that hard because, after all,
he inherited an economy that was losing jobs when he took office.
That almost reminds me of that other guy, Barack Obama!
Certainly this message will appeal to people who already blame Obama for everything and being Kenyan, but how does this make any sense to anyone who isn't already the target Fox News audience? As long as you don't know what a George W. Bush is, this makes perfect sense.
So what Team Rmoney is saying is that Romney should get a pass on his record at Governance because he inherited an economy that was losing jobs when he took office, but Obama shouldn't get that pass.
Riiiight.
Listen, if Mitt Romney can't have his resume at Bain or his record as Governor of Massachusetts looked at maybe he shouldn't apply for this job.
More below the fold.
In other words, if we were to apply to Obama the same standard that the Romney campaign wants applied to itself, Obama has created millions of jobs. (Relatedly, Mike Tomasky tried to apply the same standard to both men’s records, and concluded that if you don’t factor in early job loss for either, Obama’s job growth percentage exceeds Romney’s.)
All this is more than just a gotcha. It goes directly to the heart of Romney’s entire case against Obama. The claim that “net” jobs were lost on Obama’s watch is absolutely central to Romney’s whole argument, and the Romney team has repeated it for months and months in every conceivable forum. But the new standard the Romney campaign wants applied to him — i.e., that the focus should be on jobs added after jobs losses were reversed — would seem to completely undercut this entire case.
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line
Bold text added by the diarist
Vote for me, I stand by what I said, whatever that was! And don't blame me for my lousy job creation record as Governor, after all, President Obama inherited a bad economy that was created by the same people from the Bush/Cheney years who are currently advising current Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney. But that never happened because you have Romnesia, you are getting sleepy, very sleepy. Basically, the GOP strategy is to hope America goes Rip Van Winkle on the last decade and blames the whole thing on Obama, but if it is Mitt Romney's record he gets a pass cause hey, he inherited a bad economy. First one doesn't count, if you are a Republican. Reality can not have a "doesn't count if you are Republican" exception, but that's the whole basis for voting Republican right now, and the media just lets the lie dance around as a possible truth, but this is just outright stupid. This argument, that Romney inheriting a bad economy gives him a pass his first year, I can't believe Republicans would try to have both sides of this issue, it just doesn't make sense. Republicans are admitting that what you inherit when you enter an office matters, that destroys the entire case of every voting for Republicans again after the disastorous Hooveresque Bush/Cheney years.
Vote for Mitt Romney, it's not his fault his job creation record as Governor wasn't great, after all, he inherited a bad economy.
Thank you, idiot. You just made Barack Obama's case for re-election for him.
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