The remaining part of Mitt Romney that’s not despairing over the GOP primary has a whole other issue to worry about: the improving economy.
Romney has thus far done his best to sidestep the uncomfortable fact that an ailing economy helps his chances in November. But the improving unemployment rate—which we know is real now that Gallup acknowledges it—forced Romney’s hand this weekend, when he admitted, “I believe the economy is coming back, by the way.” As Romney’s entire campaign is based on a critique of Obama’s handling of the economy, this gives the putative frontrunner a difficult needle to thread.
His first attempt on Sunday didn’t sound too promising. “We’ll see what happens,” said Romney. “It’s had ups and downs…The economy always comes back after a recession, of course. There’s never been one that we didn’t recover from. The problem is this one has been deeper than it needed to be and a slower recovery than it should have been, by virtue of the policies of this president.”
Uplifting! We always recover from a recession, so hang tight, everybody. The intimation—that things will eventually improve no matter what is done by the President—is hardly a recommendation for Romney as a replacement, and neither his almost snotty assertion that Obama is taking credit for the natural restorative swing.
Even worse, consensus is beginning to build around the idea that if anything slowed the recovery, it was that the stimulus package Obama passed early into his term was too small—in other words, not that Obama’s policies were wrong, but that there weren’t enough of them.
By Monday, Romney had switched to a more focus attacked, this one on what he characterized as harmful government regulations that will discourage innovation and entrepreneurship. Regulations are unpopular in the abstract (though quite popular individually), so Romney is on sturdier ground here.
“A regulator would have shut down the Wright Brothers for their ‘dust pollution,’” said Romney in Illinois. “And the government would have banned Thomas Edison’s light bulb. Oh yeah, they just did.”
As one Tweeter pointed out, good luck squaring that with rapidly rising start up rates. Romney’s push for innovation also squares poorly with his conservative principles: the Edison bulb has been ditched in favor of innovative new bulbs, as is the case with most environmental regulations that seek to crowbar us off of old, wasteful technologies. What’s Romney to do when innovation and regulation are on the same side?
Denouncing government regulations is better, snappier politics, but it still doesn’t explain away Romney’s core problem (er, one of his core problems): that Obama’s economy is making life better for everybody but him.
---
Follow Evan McMurry @evanmcmurry
Comments (0)
Be the first to comment!