Obama camp hits Romney’s economic hypocrisy

Mitt Romney touts his private sector experience as the central argument for why he should be president over Barack Obama.  His record as CEO of Bain Capital has come under intense scrutiny (justifiably so) but there is a fine line to walk for pro-corporate Democrats who can’t seem to stop undercutting this line of attack against Romney.

Romney’s focus on his business experience is likely to distract from his other and more relevant record: His tenure as the Governor of Massachusetts.

With Mitt Romney at the helm Massachusetts was 47th out of the 50 states in job creation, the state’s long term debt increased more than $2.6 billion, and taxes increased more than $750 million per year.  This is likely the reason Romney hardly ever mentions his previous job as an executive of a state government in his quest to be the executive of the federal one.

Now that people have started to point out the fact that Romney’s record as governor is terrible, his camp is on defense, making the argument that Romney shouldn’t be judged for the entire 4 years he was governor because…wait for it….he inherited a bad economy.  Holy hypocrisy.

Apparently, this line cannot be used by anyone but Romney and instead of judging President Obama by his record taking into consideration that we were in the largest economic crisis when he took office and therefore his job creation numbers should be viewed in the context of how many jobs the economy was shedding the month he was inaugurated and at the point where his policies took effect.  If Romney gets to attack Obama for an economic crisis that he inherited, then Romney can’t then use that line in his own defense, it’s that simple.  And if Romney wants to view the president’s record based on his new set of rules then by all means let’s have at it.

The campaign launched a new video where Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter outlines clearly the double standard at work here and why Mitt Romney’s record should be viewed based on the facts.

Check out the video below:

Transcript:

“Hi I’m Stephanie Cutter Deputy Campaign manager for Obama for America. I wanted to record a quick video for you because the Romney campaign’s entire message this week is based on a double standard that we can’t let them get away with.  First, some context Mitt Romney had a lousy jobs record as Governor of Massachusetts.  That’s a fact.  Under his leadership the state fell to 47th out of 50 states in job creation. Now their having a hard time explaining this so they came up with a new way over the weekend.  Here’s Romney’s senior advisor Ed Gilespie   “You take the first year, which is a low base year when the governor came in and took office, because it was 50th in job creation out of all of the states, dead last … and they’re averaging out over the four years. So, they are bringing down the gains of his fourth year in office, which shows the real impact of his policies and diluting it with the first year in office when he came into office and it was 50th in job creation.”  In other words, they’re saying don’t hold Mitt Romney accountable for the first three years he was in office because he inherited a bad economy even though the national recession ended a year before Mitt Romney was even elected.  Now they use a different standard to assessing President Obama’s record. We know the president inherited an economy exponentially worse than what Mitt Romney inherited.  Yet these same people blame the president for job losses that occurred in January 2009, the month he took office and months before any of his policies took place.  The hypocrisy is breathtaking even for Romney.  But let’s play it out a little bit.  If we adopt this new standard then the Romney campaign should judge the president’s economic record for the 4.3 million private sector jobs when our economy began to recover just a year after the president took office.  And even if the comparison wasn’t entirely hypocritical President Obama is still creating more jobs than Romney ever did.  Take a look at the first 39 months of each of their terms which is where we are right now in President Obama’s term.  At this point President Obama has created 5 times more jobs in Massachusetts than Romney did as governor.  So the bottom line here is simple: Romney has undercut his core argument for being president by playing by two sets of rules. No matter how hard the Romney campaign tries to spin his record the fact remains, Romney economics didn’t work then and it won’t work now.”