It seems even the Village is struggling to support Romney's 'curious relationship with facts'. In today's WaPo Dana Milbank points out a paragraph from Romney's first answer at Tuesday's debate:
“I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years,” Romney said. “It’s going to help Jeremy get a job when he comes out of school.”
The candidate’s statement, a version of a claim he has made for months on the stump and in a new ad, was bold, precise — and baseless.
Romney's 'twelve million points of jobs', or whatever, was debunked just before Tuesday's debate, by factchecker Glen Kessler who works for the same paper that Milbank does.
Hours earlier, my Washington Post colleague Glenn Kessler had reported that the source the Romney campaign provided for the jobs figure was a trio of studies that either didn’t directly analyze Romney’s policies or were based on longer time horizons than four years.
But the claim, though discredited, had become a key part of Romney’s message — and he went right ahead and repeated the falsehood during the debate.
Romney’s economists do think the economy would add 12 million jobs under his policies over the next four years, and they issued a white paper in August claiming that. But this paper is not based on Romney’s five-point plan, and elements of that plan, such as cracking down on China and consolidating job training, aren’t even mentioned in the paper. Rather, the 12 million figure is based on the economists’ assumptions that Romney’s policies would mean that “the current recovery will align with the average gains of similar past recoveries.”
But here's what Romney said in his stump speech yesterday at a rally in Chesapeake VA (which judging by the
pictures doesn't look all that well attended).
Kessler called Romney’s claim a bait-and-switch, a characterization Obama echoed when he spoke at a rally in Iowa on Wednesday afternoon. “Turns out his jobs math isn’t any better than his tax math,” Obama charged.
About the same time, Romney took the stage in Chesapeake, Va. This time, he dropped the reference to 12 million jobs. “I’m going to get this economy going,” was the extent of his vow. It wasn’t flashy, but it had the virtue of being honest.
(Here's a
link to the video which I won't embed, just rely on Dana for accuracy so you don't have to suffer through Willard saying he'll 'put in place' 'lettuce-legislation' when he gets to 'Wash-i-ton', in between clacks of his tongue. But the crowd doesn't sound too enthusiastic either)
So Romney's strategy, all campagin long, is clear - tell the lie in front of 60 million people, hope the moderator doesn't fact check him, then after the lie is debunked, just drop the lie in front of small, partisan crowds.
Now it's just 12 Million lies.
RCP has Virignia very close. President Obama has just edged up 0.8%. Get out the vote in Virginia.