Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Short Memory of the Republican Candidates

Of many things, this is probably the one that I find most amusing about the Republican presidential candidates, and really, the Party as a whole.

For example, one of Mitt Romney's quotes on this website supporting him reads "...President Obama instituted the most anti-growth, anti-investment, anti-jobs measures that we have seen in our lifetime." I find that interesting. In January 2009, the last month that President George W. Bush was in office, the U.S lost 598,000 jobs, the worst single month loss in 34 years. Sure, the trend continued for a time after President Obama took office. There's no way it couldn't; problems created over the span of eight years cannot possibly be fixed in a couple of months. Fast forward 3 years; in January 2012, we gained 243,000 jobs. By now, we all know the chart showing the monthly job growth (or loss, as the case may be...) numbers, dating to 2008 (obtained here from the Joint Economic Committee's website):


If Obama's policies are the "most... anti-jobs measures that we have seen in our lifetime", what does that say about the previous administration? To the rational mind, if we are hemorrhaging 598,000 jobs per month, and we then institute even worse policies, we should continue to lose more and more jobs every month. At least, that is the definition of the word "worse" as I understand it. Perhaps Mr. Romney said "Obama" when he meant "Bush". He has been known to make more than his fair share of gaffes. 


The only other rational explanation is that Mr. Romney suffers from a deficiency of skills in either English or mathematics. Or maybe he has some sort of up/down vision inversion issue which causes the above chart to appear upside down to him. Whatever the case, it is clear that something just doesn't add up. This talk may work on the unfortunate masses who get more and more sucked in every time an anti-Obama slur is thrown out, but anybody with the ability to think rationally (even just a little bit) can see what's really going on.

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