Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The rationale for Willard "Mittens" Romney’s campaign is based upon the idea that President Obama should be held responsible for the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the months just after he took office when the economy was in free fall — but before any of his policies took effect.
Greg Sargent writes at the Plum Line blog, Mitt Romney the Amnesia Candidate:
As I noted last week, the Romney campaign is betting that he can lull the American people into forgetting just how severe a crisis Obama inherited upon taking office. The “net” job loss metric is central to this effort to inflict mass amnesia on the public.
Yet despite the fact that this argument is absolutely central to Romney’s case against Obama, it has drawn very little media scrutiny.
So it’s good to see that Paul Krugman has devoted an entire column to it today, labeling Romney the “amnesia candidate”:
Mr. Romney constantly talks about job losses under Mr. Obama. Yet all of the net job loss took place in the first few months of 2009, that is, before any of the new administration’s policies had time to take effect. So the Ohio speech was a perfect illustration of the way the Romney campaign is banking on amnesia, on the hope that voters don’t remember that Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was already in free fall.
How does the campaign deal with people who point out the awkward reality that all of the “Obama” job losses took place before any Obama policies had taken effect? The fallback argument — which was rolled out when reporters asked about the factory closure — is that even though Mr. Obama inherited a deeply troubled economy, he should have fixed it by now. That factory is still closed, said a Romney adviser, because of the failure of Obama policies “to really get this economy going again.”
...he’s basically attacking Mr. Obama for not acting as if George Bush had been given a third term. Are the American people — and perhaps more to the point, the news media — forgetful enough for that attack to work? I guess we’ll find out.
The degree to which Romney has been able to skate by with this argument is truly remarkable. It’s the basis of Romney’s entire rationale for running for president. He has repeated it in every conceivable forum for months on end. Yet it has gone almost entirely unexamined by the news media. One hopes Krugman’s column today will begin to change that.
Sadly, Greg Sargent has the answer to this question is subsequent posts:
A good read from Steve Kornacki on a factor that could prove decisive in the presidential race: The political media’s willingness to grant Romney the presumption that he’s really a moderate, despite all the positions he’s taken on actual issues and so forth.
You see, Romney didn’t really believe all that silly stuff he said to get through the primary — all that was just part of the game.
And
Adam Serwer on a new Pew study finding the allegedly liberal media has been rougher on Obama than it has on Romney, and on the bizarre willingness in some quarters to internalize the right’s media ref-gaming.
The "lamestream" media loves a liar.
There may be some faint hope for the "lamestream" media:
The Associated Press takes a stand on the big story: Mitt Romney has repeatedly refused to tell voters the specifics they need to judge his policies, and he has simply sidestepped the hard part.
Surprisingly few news outlets have been willing to state this quite so clearly.
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