The Republican National Committee had some trouble this morning responding to the new U.S. job figures. So, too, did the party’s likely presidential nominee.
The former Massachusetts governor ignored reporters’ questions about the report, and did not address it in his remarks, leveling his usual criticisms at the president instead.
“Don’t forget by the way that this President, how many months ago was it, 37 months ago, told us that if he could borrow $787 billion, almost $1 trillion, he would keep unemployment below 8 percent. It has not been below 8 percent since. This president has not succeeded, this president has failed, and that’s the reason we’re going to get rid of him in 2012,” [Mitt Romney] said to a standing ovation.
There are a few interesting angles to consider here. The first is that Romney’s refusal to even acknowledge the new job numbers suggests he has a problem. Romney has already said, more than once, that he believes the economy has improved since President Obama took office, and whether the Republican candidate ignores reporters’ questions or not, the facts are hard to dispute.
Second, Romney likes to throw around that claim about “he would keep unemployment below 8 percent,” but it’s just not true. Repeating a lie does not make it more accurate. And third, if we’re really going to have a conversation about who “has failed” at job creation, we should probably talk less about the guy who prevented an economic collapse, and more about the governor whose record on job creation was something of a fiasco — during Romney’s tenure, Massachusetts’ job creation was “one of the worst in the country,” ranking 47th out of 50 states in job growth.
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