Mitt Romney is a liar. Lately, I’m finding it physically painful to listen to this man speak, or to read his remarks because he is shameless, unethical, and a bald-faced liar. It is unclear who Romney thinks he’s running against, but it is clear that he is not running against President Obama. At least, he’s not running against “IRL” President Obama. Mitt Romney is running against a strawman, all the while erecting strawmen and promptly setting them on fire.
Take Mittens’ comments on Thursday about President Obama’s economic policies:
“This president’s misguided policies have seem muddled, confused and simply ineffective,” said Romney, speaking at the minority-run Production Products, a military contractor that manufactures shelters to shield from chemical and biological attacks, among others.
“When you look around at America’s economy, three-and-a-half years into this presidency, it’s painfully obvious that this inexperienced president with no experience as a leader was simply not up to the task of solving a great economic crisis,” said Romney. “This is not just a failure of policy; it is a moral failure of tragic proportion. Our government has a moral commitment to help every American help himself. And that commitment has been broken.”
“I will not be that president of doubt and deception,” said Romney. “I will lead us to a better place.’
Or take Romney’s comments yesterday after President Obama’s rhetorical “the private sector is doing fine” slip-up in a press conference:
“For the president of the United States to stand up and say that the private sector is doing fine is going to go down in history as an extraordinary miscalculation and misunderstanding by a president who is out of touch, and we’re going to take back this country and get America working again,” Romney said.
After you stop laughing at Mr. Roboto calling President Obama out of touch, let’s take a look at the effect of President Obama’s economic policies. (Don’t groan! Stick with it. It’s not that bad. The links in the list below are charts):
- The private sector has been adding jobs steadily since the end of Obama’s first year, and today there are more private sector jobs than there were before Obama took office.
- The public sector, on the other hand, has fallen off a cliff: Total government employment is far below where it was when Obama started office.
- Excluding federal government workers, the decline in government employment is downright disastrous.
- President Obama’s stimulus helped for a while, but it wasn’t enough.
- Also: school construction spending is on the decline, spending on roads is down, public sector spending on public safety (firefighters and police) has collapsed, and public construction on the water supply is way down.
So, relatively speaking, the private sector is doing fine. The public sector, on the other hand, is a disaster. What party is responsible for the failure in the public sector? The GOP. The party led by this fucking guy:
[read the rest at TRS-ABLC]
gnomedad
He doesn’t “think” anything; he’s just reading from Republican scripture, my friends.
russ
whenever you see or hear take our country back there sum kinda prejudice involved
dog whistle for not like us
Mike G
He’s running against the Fixed News image of Obama, which is all Rmoney’s mouth-breather followers know in their mental cocoon.
LosGatosCA
If you ever wonder if politicians ever say things that are untrue just to capitalize on a vulnerability of an opponent in order to win an election just think of these phrases:
“Missile gap”
“Secret plan”
“Compassionate conservative”
“Change you can believe in”
Politics ain’t bean bag and it’s hard to get worked up about one candidate lying about the record of their opponent or misleading the voters about what they will do.
In the words of Ted Kennedy, I believe, ‘It’s a time honored tradition in Washington to first mis-state the policy position of your opponent and then disagree with it (the misstated position) vehemently.”
If you don’t care about the future and want to loot the present – vote Republican. If you want to vote for people who pretend to care about the future but won’t immediately trash the present – vote Democratic. It’s a big difference but not satisfying in any way.
bemused
I can’t decide which head smacker is worse, “out of touch” or Mitt saying he will not be a president of “doubt and deception”.
EconWatcher
Mitt is indeed a tool, but Obama is going to regret that slip of the tongue. It’s his worst in this election cycle so far, and in my opinion it does have some stick to it.
I’ve only cringed a few times at what Obama has said, but that’s one. (“Clinging to their guns and religion” in 2008 was another in a handful of examples. “You’re likeable enough” to Hillary also wasn’t so good.)
Yutsano
@EconWatcher: Is it just me or does Obama always go gaffe-prone in June?
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
Oh really, Willard? Let me guess, you’ll be helping Americans help themselves by slashing food stamps and social security, so that Americans aren’t tempted to sloth by those government handouts. Better get rid of the Pell grant while you’re at it, since it’d be awful if any students felt that they didn’t really earn their degrees properly by saving part of their minimum wage paychecks for a decade or two.
Yes sir, Mitt Romney is just here to help you out. Who wouldn’t trust that
whiteangelic face?ruemara
It ain’t no damned gaffe. For fucks sake, the private sector is doing amazingly well compared to the public. It is a snippet taken out of context where he even says it is by comparison. Fucking hell.
Trentrunner
The White House has been obscenely ineffective at messaging, especially contrasted with the effectiveness of the right: Obamacare, Obama recession, leading from behind, etc.
And the Supremes’ ruling on ACA will make this a very bad June for Obama. Whatever way they rule, it won’t be good for Obama.
The economy will stagnate through the election, and the $1B+ from Rove & Co. will make this a very very close election. Suppression could make the difference.
Yay!
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@EconWatcher: It was a gaffe in the classic sense: a true statement that shouldn’t have been said near a live mic.
It’s too bad that Americans are dumb enough to believe that cutting government jobs is helpful to the economy. That’s the heart of the problem.
Both Sides Do It
I agree Romney’s just an epic weasel and his argument is disingenuous
I agree that the biggest problem with the economy right now is public sector spending falling off a cliff. I agree there have been a steady number of private sector jobs added since Obama took office.
I agree with the general point and gist and tone and everything of the post, all completely appropriate
But let’s not take our eyes off the ball, here:
Private sector employment is still woefully below what it has to be. There aren’t enough jobs being added to keep up with population growth, let alone There is going to be an entire generation of people whose lives are irrevocably fucked up because of un- or underemployment. The older portion of the working population is just getting epically boned. Unemployment for people without college degrees is above 16%, unemployment for young black males is something over 25% (I think; over 20%, at least).
This is a moral crisis. This is something to be ashamed of. Obama should be telling Bernanke to step on the gas and pump inflation up four or five percent or to look for a new job. It’s almost a crime against humanity for interest rates to be this low. This shit needs to be talked about in moral terms, not the “government has to tighten it’s belt like a family / Simpson Bowles / freeze government spending for four years” shit Obama’s been slinging.
Again, Romney might be making his mouth say the words “this is a moral crisis” but his arguments are clearly the opposite of what I’ve been saying here. I ain’t defending the guy. I’m saying we shouldn’t excuse Obama just because of the rhetoric Romney is using.
Trentrunner
And just for the sake of fairness, how is Romney’s “I’m not concerned about poor people…” any less of a manufactured gaffe than Obama’s “doing fine”?
Lojasmo
@EconWatcher:
The private sector IS doing well. I think O will let Mitt ruminate on this, and wait for it…when mitt brings it up in the first debate (and he will, because he’s a feckless dick) O can say “we created more private sector jobs in my first three years than were created in the eight years of the previous republican administration”.
Clean Willie
Criticism of Obama from the left generally makes sense and is worth taking seriously. Criticism from the right is utter horseshit. How anyone can listen to these Republicans without falling over laughing is beyond me.
RD
@EconWatcher:
He said what we were all thinking.
This is often unavoidable in politics.
A subtle dig that still amuses democratic pollsters.
c u n d gulag
Yes, let’s vote for the “Cannibal Capitalist” Mitt – he’ll finish stripping the American people’s meat off their bones!
And he and his pals will have the FEAST TO END ALL FEASTS!
EconWatcher
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
Corporate profits are doing fine, but I wouldn’t say the private sector economy is doing fine. I know what he was thinking–unemployment would be about 7% if not for all of those government layoffs–but 7% is still not fine.
some guy
the nice rhetorical trick in ABL’s headline is something the average voter isn’t going to buy. look at that first link and see that yes, 4.3 million jobs were added from Obama’s inauguration, bringing private sector employment to almost exactly where it was in 2009. so private employment is now bck to where it was 4 years ago.
unfortunately, this is not “high private sector growth” and few economists or voters would agree that it is. like shrill critics like Kthug et alia saidat the time the first stimulus was NOT big enough, was too geared towards tax cuts, and would NOT be followed by a second stimulus. unfortunately they were correct in all 3 claims.
different-church-lady
@Both Sides Do It: It ain’t a fucking moral crisis: it’s inevitable payback for the excesses and economic fakery of the 2000s. Ain’t nothing nobody can do but let it run its course, because the damn lack of speed is baked into the conditions.
Romney is going to try to make his hay where the sun shines. Even if it’s party cloudy where his grass is.
EconWatcher
@Both Sides Do It:
I see Boths Sides Do It beat me to it, and said it much better.
different-church-lady
It occurs to me that Mitt is gonna base his campaign on the idea that people are going to forget that the growth and low unemployment of the mid-Bush years were based on a Potemkin economy.
And based on some of the comments I’m seeing here he might make some headway with it.
thruppence
He knows he is lying. This is their strategy. Republican operatives like Frank Luntz have spent decades devising ways of lying that work.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@ruemara:
Seriously, the only part that’s off is the fact that the private market BUSINESSES are making out like gangbusters. Record profits all over the place and massive ostrich-sized nest eggs, while jobs are still at a premium because these businesses don’t actually wanna fucking hire anyone. They’ve made all these profits by squeezing the last drop of blood out of each stone they own.
But nope, it’s already decided, the narrative has spoken: This is as bad or worse than McCain declaring ‘The fundamentals of the economy are strong’ the same day the Markets started their long crash.
Jeff Spender
I started to reread Harry Potter. I have to say, it’s more believable than anything that comes out of Mitt’s mouth.
Southern Beale
Hmm. James O’Keefe’s next scoop was supposed to be an infiltration of Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity church.
jl
Romney gives off the vibe to me, of a person who has lived by the Golden Rule for so long he knows nothing else, it is the way he thinks.
By Golden Rule, I mean “He who has the gold, makes the rules”.
For people who have absorbed this credo into their marrow and souls, one sets the rules by what one says. That is, we lesser people make must take care about what we say. Few of our statements are performative, in the sense that we can create the reality we describe.
But the opposite is true for Romney. He talked that way many times in the course of one of his leveraged buy outs, when his statements were read and parsed very carefully by the lessers for what they meant about what he would do.
Not sure that makes sense. But that is the creepy authoritarian vibe I get from Romney that gets my fight or flight instinct neurons a buzzin’.
EconWatcher
@different-church-lady:
Of course you are correct–under Bush, we reached a point where 40% of (reported and alleged) corporate profits were from the financial sector. That was a fantasy. But Obama does not help himself by suggesting that the private sector economy is fine now; it’s obviously not.
I’m sure he realizes that. It was a slip of the tongue. But those can be costly.
Mnemosyne
@EconWatcher:
As long as we’re splitting hairs, unemployment actually would be further down than 7% overall if not for those government layoffs, because having all of those unemployed people is dragging down the rest of the economy. If the public employees hadn’t lost their jobs, then private businesses would be doing better (more customers) and unemployment in the private sector would go down faster.
That’s the whole point: Republicans love to pretend that private sector and public sector unemployment are totally unrelated and you can lay off public employees with no economic consequences, but the numbers are showing that laying off mass numbers of public employees also slows down private sector employment.
(Edited for pronoun trouble.)
darrius
He’s just talking to the Faux noise brainwashed idiots. They will never vote for Obama anyways so who cares.
WereBear
Mitt Romney talking about moral failure is like Tiger Woods on fidelity; Paula Deen on diabetes prevention; Idi Amin on human rights.
No standing whatsoever.
In fact I’d say “moral failure” is a Republican goal.
RD
@Trentrunner:
How can he “message” when half of his base had unrealistic expectations from the start?
I mean, Obama is a pretty smart guy–but I don’t think he anticipated how many loons would come crawling out of the woodwork to prove how little they know about how politics actually works.
EconWatcher
@Mnemosyne:
Fair point, but this is really just another reason why the private sector isn’t doing fine.
Chyron HR
@Trentrunner:
I think you’re supposed to at least try and be subtle when you play the “Whatever happens it’s bad for Obama” card.
Lurking Canadian
@Both Sides Do It: It’s almost a crime against humanity for interest rates to be this low.I think you probably meant “inflation” rates. To fix things right now using only monetary policy would require interest rates significantly below zero. Interest rates are too high, if anything.
WereBear
The only way the White House could message effectively is if they had their own propaganda channel and 90% of the MSM in the tank for them… like the opposition does.
We cannot use conventional methods.
Madonna and I are about the same age; but how can we possibly compare the relative hardbodiness of her and I? She’s been a trained and working dancer for three decades and can afford to do little else for most of her day. While I’m a computer worker with a compromised hip who has to work a full-time day job.
So let’s quit whining and come up with some clever end runs, shall we? It doesn’t matter how brilliant President Obama might be, when he’s going to be quoted in a chopped-up and out-of-context fashion, does it?
Sal
He is running on the Bush\Cheney platform.
Unless you are pointing this out daily the MSM will not report it. This is your platform and you are wasting it…
Baud
@WereBear:
Word!
bemused
@Southern Beale:
I love it when rightwingers go all Hatfield and McCoy on each other. They are all so amoral, I can’t believe it doesn’t happen more often.
Mnemosyne
@EconWatcher:
But I think that’s what Obama was trying to get across: despite what Republicans try to claim, the private sector doesn’t need special help at the moment because their recovery is moving along. The public sector does need help, because layoffs there are dragging everything else down, including the private sector.
It’s just so maddening to me that even people on the left will accept the one sentence excised from the context of a long speech as being representative of what the actual speech was and bitch and moan about that one sentence. We should be pointing out that Obama is fucking right about this, not that you can squint at that single sentence and kind of twist it into what Romney said, so therefore the whole speech was worthless.
ruemara
@WereBear: Exactly. Whining is something we can do when we have the pleasure of time.
Trentrunner
@Chyron HR: I should have made myself clearer and then you wouldn’t have been such a cumfunnel:
The White House’s messaging about ACA has been so abysmal that just the fact that it will be in the news is a loss for Obama.
But let’s take a closer look at the three possible Supremes’ outcomes:
1) ACA is fully upheld. Then Romney says he’ll run on repealing it, and get all the support that the White House has lost on it with their shitty non-messaging.
2) ACA is partially upheld. Obama–a constitutional scholar, remember–looks like he can’t write a damned law that is constitutional. Plus, confusion. Romney gets to say he’ll repeal the bad parts, and that the Supremes have started what he will finish.
3) ACA is fully struck down. Total catastrophe for Obama, for the same reason as 1 + 2: It’s in the news, and it looks like Professor Obama doesn’t know his Constitution. Plus he looks ineffective since he spent 2+ years of political capital on something that didn’t pass Constitutional muster.
Thanks for this opportunity to clarify, Chyron HR, you dried fleck of cancer-ridden diarrhea.
The Thin Black Duke
@WereBear: Exactly.
More to the point, anybody who’s gonna be offended by this non-controversy wasn’t planning on voting for Obama anyway.
It’s just a lame alibi.
Redshift
@Mnemosyne: Exactly. Unless you jump on board with the political-media shiny object chasers obsessing on one sentence, the point he was obviously making was that the private sector is not “fine” in the sense of “doesn’t need to get any better,” but “fine” in the sense of “progressing reasonably well considering that it’s recovering from an epic financial crisis.”
Yes, in a sane world, we would be getting more stimulus to address unemployment, and the biggest part of that would be funneling money to the states so they can hire back much-needed public servants, which was exactly what he was saying.
RD
@Trentrunner:
Your preferred outcome for the ACA was never even remotely on the table.
Deal with it, and move on.
Mnemosyne
@Trentrunner:
That’s a whole lot less support than you seem to think. Polling shows Americans are evenly divided between repealing it and expanding it, but news stories have been adding both numbers together and claiming that it represents “opposition”:
You really think that the 33 percent of those polled who want Obamacare expanded are going to vote for Romney when he promises to repeal it?
Jebediah
@Southern Beale:
I am so certain that would have been a resounding success for them. A church that has been the focus of conservitards’ ire for so long would never spot or be suspicious of such smooth operators. I wish it had happened! There is just no way it couldn’t have been totally hilarious.
Mnemosyne
@Jebediah:
Reading over the Wonkette article, I can almost guarantee you that the “sting” would have involved blackface.
Somehow I picture it kind of like this, with Rev. Wright in the Tracy Morgan role.
Suzan
@ruemara:
Indeed! Look at the stock market and the profits of big corporations in this country. They are at record highs, not just for this recession but throughout US history. Banks, tax subsidized oil companies, everything but Facebook is through the roof right now.
The private sector IS doing fine.
cat48
National Journal actually polled folks to see how it would affect their view of Obama if Healthcare were overturned & not so much:
gbear
@Trentrunner:
Shorter Trentrunner:
1) This is great news for John McCain!
2) This is great news for John McCain!
3) This is great news for John McCain!
LosGatosCA
All the folks who think that Obama is right by saying anything is doing just fine, in a non-sarcastic way, should simply look at the right track/wrong track polling numbers: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/direction_of_country-902.html
That’s a -25.4 spread. Minus 25.4.
If Obama said the bankers are doing just fine by screwing their customers or the rich are doing just fine they can afford to pay more taxes, ok. But the private sector? Unemployment is the problem. In an election year talking about anything but working on getting it lower is wasted breath from the normal voting public’s view.
Allan
@Trentrunner: I can’t believe I’m bothering to answer the knob-gobbler who works the back stall at the GOP convention men’s room, but this:
would be more effective if everyone hadn’t screamed for two years that Obama should have written the bill himself instead of leaving it to Congress to, you know, write legislation.
Mnemosyne
@LosGatosCA:
Did you happen to scroll back and see what that spread was in November/December? What you’re seeing now has improved by 15-20 points over where it was 6 months ago.
RD
@LosGatosCA:
Bullshit. By implication that leaves congress off the hook, when that is clearly not the case.
Mnemosyne
@LosGatosCA:
Also, when people think “right track/wrong track,” do you really think that they’re primarily thinking about private sector unemployment, or are they also thinking about how their local branch of the public library shut down because funding was cut off and how the number of students in their kid’s classroom shot up because half the teachers got laid off in budget cuts?
Cacti
The concern trolls are uber-concerned today.
LosGatosCA
@Mnemosyne:
We’re less worse now than before when things were really bad, but perhaps they’ll be worse as the economy doesn’t improve over the summer, or maybe with real good luck, the gap will only be minus 10 to 15 pts in November.
Of course, Obama will be able to go out and say things are doing even better than fine if unemployment gets down go only 7.9%.
Rmoney’s self-destruction is the only real shining hope at this point. Obama completely missed the boat on making the Republicans owning the economy by reappointing Bernanke and his periodic ‘pivoting’ to jobs.
Cacti
Mittens must think of himself as the worst person ever based on the Massachusetss job numbers.
Lojasmo
@Trentrunner:
Your attitude still sucks, dick. Also, too your claim pretty much fizzles in relation to the poll up thread that shows loss on ACA changes only 15″ of people’s attitudes for the worse.
Eat a bag of dicks.
RD
@Cacti:
The PUMA motto: “We’re not happy until you’re not happy”.
Shawn in ShowMe
Hey, the Congressional races haven’t been set yet so the concern trolls have to keep busy somehow. Shaking angry fists at the sky over a Presidential gaffe while ignoring the ten gaffes made by the opposition keeps a body in shape. Other exercises to try:
–Huffing and puffing every time a speaker at Netroots laments the failure of the Obama administration to live up to their idea of change. Great cardio workout.
–Pointing out ever poll that mentions how liberals are dissatified with Obama and ignoring every poll that highlights Romney’s poor favorable/unfavorable ratio. All that pointing is great for the triceps.
rikyrah
@Southern Beale:
like they wouldn’t stick out at Trinity.
lacp
@RD: “Sad is for sharing”
Jebediah
@Mnemosyne:
Of course! and when Trinity parishioners get pissed about about it, you can also bet a couple of winger bloggers would wail about what racists the parishioners clearly are.
All this funhouse hall-of-mirrors crap would be more entertaining if the idiots didn’t have so much influence on the “official” media’s narrative.
SiubhanDuinne
@ruemara:
Thank you!
SiubhanDuinne
@bemused:
Been waiting a long time for an opportunity to FT.
Fluke bucket
@Chyron HR:
Damn right! I am still laughing like hell about that one.
Hill Dweller
Also too, there were approximately 4 million private sector jobs lost in ’09 after Obama was sworn in. Despite that, there are now more private sector jobs than when he took office.
The private sector has been adding jobs at a pretty good clip, despite state/local austerity dragging down growth. If the public sector numbers were the same as they were when he was sworn in, never mind actually growing like every other administration, the UE rate would probably be below 7%, and the growth numbers would be better.
I hope Obama doubles down on the public sector numbers. He should hammer the fact that the UE numbers would be much better if public sector jobs had grown at the same rate they did in Reagan’s or Bush’s first term.
Jay in Oregon
@Mnemosyne:
That, or he was hoping to get some more use out of his pimp costume.
Davis X. Machina
@Hill Dweller: Wisconsin shows us that somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of of Obama voters think the optimum number of public sector jobs is ‘zero’.