On Sunday Elisabeth brought you Team Romney’s pitch-perfect attack ad challenging President Obama’s assertion that “the private sector is doing fine.” Today, unsurprisingly, they’re keeping the pressure on, releasing yet another television spot underscoring the inanity of the president’s remark.
Setting aside the fact President Obama attended six fundraisers the day the May jobs report was released, it’s a gross miscalculation to state the “private sector is doing fine” when the economy added only 69,000 jobs last month and the national unemployment rate jumped to 8.2 percent. As Hugh Hewitt pointed out in his Washington Examiner column today, the president’s statement is somewhat reminiscent of Gerald Ford’s baffling “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” gaffe in 1976. Still, Team Obama continues to boast they’ve “created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months” – and while this, of course, paints a rosy picture of the American economy -- Mitt Romney is using the occasion to bring to light a few salient examples of the president’s failures.
Romney countered by reeling off a litany of statistics about the nation's economic plight -- 23 million Americans unemployed, underemployed or dropped out of the labor force; the economy growing at a meager 1.9% in the first quarter; the median income dropping by 10% over the last four years; and record home foreclosures.
Mitt Romney has made a number of gaffes this year, to be sure, but they all seem to pale in comparison to the president’s latest blunder. And while Team Obama’s electoral prospects will probably recover, especially with a little help from the media, it’s a press conference that won’t likely be forgotten.
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