Monday, April 23, 2012

Krugman for NYT: "How stupid does Romney think we are?" Very, apparently.


This.

Reasonably, Romney is hoping to make some of Obama's recovery tactics a focal point of his campaign, but he seems to be going about it the wrong way. Last week, he inexplicably chose a drywall factory in Ohio that closed down to be a photo op and an example of Obama's failure to help the economy rebound. The reason this is inexplicable is that it closed during W's administration. Sure, maybe you could make the stretch of an argument that had Obama done a better job in getting the housing bubble going again, the factory would be up-and-running. The other flaw with this ploy, though, is that Obama has done remarkably better than his predecessor in boosting the private sector, recovering nearly all the job loss that had taken effect during his early months in office, whereas at the end of his first term, GWB was at the helm of a 2.4 million job dip in private employment since he took office. Romney is the "amnesia candidate," and Obama's team would do well to help voters see through this latest photo op and the like that are sure to come.

1 comment:

Greg Hyman said...

It certainly doesn't help that even officials in the town where the drywall plant is located question whether this is a reasonable tactic--among other things, one said that if a problem takes eight years to develop, it won't be fixed in four. Not to mention that unemployment numbers in Ohio have considerably improved since Obama took office.