Romney’s Dishonest Ad

By Taylor Marvin

The Romney campaign just released their first televised campaign ad:

Think Progress explains what’s going on here:

“The ad features a voice-over of Obama saying ‘if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.’ Then-candidate Obama indeed said those words, perhaps dozens of times during the closing month of the 2008 campaign. The only problem? Obama was actually quoting the words of a strategist from Sen. John McCain’s campaign.”

I honestly don’t understand what the Romney campaign is thinking. Romney’s own communication director admits that it’s at best misleading, and the quote attributed to Obama is just asking to be (justifably) denounced as an outright lie. Why drag up a three year old instance of Obama quoting a Republican to attack his opponents’ handling of the economy? Obama’s presidency has seen a less than 1% reduction in the unemployment rate from its 2009 high, even two years after the US official exited the recession:

While the Obama campaign can run on crediting poor economic performance to Bush-era policies and Republican refusals to accept further stimulus and blind enthusiasm for ill-timed austerity, Obama’s economic record leaves a lot to defend, especially in the mind of Republican primary voters. Why lie at all?