The press has been mulling which of two recent "gaffes" by the presidential contenders is llikely to prove more damaging: Mitt Romney's suggestion that we need to "cut back" on firefighters, cops, and teachers; or President Obama's assessment Friday that, despite the weak economy, the private sector is "doing fine."
On Hardball Monday, David Corn of Mother Jones, an MSNBC contributor, pointed out why the two comments aren't exactly equivalent. Said Corn:
The difference between what he said and what Obama said was, Obama’s was a gaffe. This really seemed to indicate what Mitt Romney is thinking and what he would like to do to this country.
Indeed, Romney has been pretty clear about his stance. As Corn noted, Romney recently told teachers he believes that smaller class sizes—something that would be hard to achieve while laying off teachers—would do little to give kids a better education. And his camapign chair, John Sununu, doubled down on Romney's desire to lay off teachers in an interview with MSNBC's Chris Jansing earlier Monday.
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LOL. You've gotta be kidding me? The truth is just the opposite of what Corn said. Obama's comment wasn't a gaffe. It was clearly his line of thinking. And the awkward defense from surrogates, namely Axelrod, spell that out very clearly.
They genuinely believe the way to create jobs is to help local governments hire more people. It's not about pro-growth policies, improving the private sector economy, it's about falsely manipulating job growth by providing another stimulus from the federal gov't.
I would agree with you that what the President said was not a gaffe but I would argue that it was more or less the truth.The private sector is doing fine but it hasn't done that on it's own.It got help from the federal government through the stimulus which according to the CBO worked.
The private sector is one part of the economy.The public sector is the other and this sector needs to keep up with the private sector if unemployment is to be driven on the downward trajectory.You cannot have one without the other.The public sector has lost over 600,000 jobs while the private sector has gained over 4.3 million jobs so as far as I am concerned the President is indeed correct when he made the statement about the private sector "doing fine" because at least for the moment it is recovering.It's the public sector needs a bump.
Every Republican president since Raygun that has faced a recession has INCREASED the size of government to help improve the economy.
So why the 180 now? Simple. They are willing to tank the economy just to get back in power.
Very sleazy, indeed.