PoliticOlogy has reported before about the problem Mitt Romney is having campaigning against Barack Obama's terrible economy in swing states where the economy is actually rebounding at above average rates.
Half of Romney's entire campaign is that Obama has failed to turn the economy around, and his vehicle for delivering that message is ads titled "Despair" and stump speeches long on apocalyptic forebodings, i.e., Obama's-campaign-slogan-is-'Forward'-as-in-'Forward-off-a-cliff'-ha-ha-get-it?
The problem is that in six of the eight main swing states, unemployment is lower than the national average (sucks to be you, Nevada and North Carolina), which has caused local and state politicians to follow Mitt Romney's doom-and-gloom speech with a quick and panicked reminder to the crowd that things may be bad elsewhere, but they're great around here. The mixed message is not helping Mitt Romney sell his candidacy.
| Related: Mitt Romney's Real Swing State Problem |
Until recently, Romney has been able to count on Florida, where the unemployment rate is 8.6%, a few ticks above the national average, and where he has a perhaps not-coincidental lead in the polls. But Florida's unemployment is falling, from 11.1% when Governor Rick Scott took office, a fact Scott has been touting to the distinct disadvantage of Mitt Romney's anti-Obama message. Via Bloomberg:
The state Republican party ran a television ad in March crediting Scott, who is a year and a half into a four-year term, for drops in the unemployment rate..."The first time I saw that ad I initially thought it was an Obama ad," said Brad Coker, managing director of the Washington-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research. "They’ll have to tamp it down."
That's exactly what the Romney team asked Scott to do:
Scott, a Republican, was asked to say that the state’s jobless rate could improve faster under a Romney presidency, according to the people, who asked not to be named..."It would be better if everybody was singing from the same hymnal."
Think it'll work? Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell tried the line the other day:
McDonnell offered the latest variation on Thursday as he introduced Romney at a rally in Portsmouth, Va. "Welcome to the state with the lowest unemployment rate in the Southeast," McDonnell said.
As the audience cheered, Romney paused, then smiled and clapped his hands four times. "That's good news," he muttered, ignoring the head wind that any good news on jobs creates for his campaign in a crucial swing state like Virginia.
"Now as good as that is," McDonnell continued, "imagine how much better off we’re going to be with President Mitt Romney."
Tough sell. Ohio Governor John Kasich flat out contradicted Romney after the candidate asked, "Where are the jobs?" Kasich responded with a website he had set detailing exactly where the jobs are, 80,000 of them.
| Related: Florida Governor Rick Scott Is So Unpopular He Would Lose To A Figment Of Voters' Imagination |
Romney's message to Scott is the first time the campaign has directly ordered a Governor to tone it down on the economic good news. That's not good news for Scott, who's so unpopular he's losing in polls to people who don't exist. Scott has been busy disenfranchising voters, suing the Department of Justice, and refusing to implement Obamacare, all to make the national GOP happy, but Romney won't even campaign with him, fearing the Governor's toxicity will rub off. If you're Rick Scott, at what point do you decide that it's not worth it to play Romney's game? And if you're Mitt Romney, who just took a 10 point dive in the Florida polls, how bad is it that the state's governor is running around undermining your entire campaign message?
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