What's Sauce for the Goose, . . .

Here is a campaign ad aired by the Romney campaign prior to the Iowa caucus:

The ad came under harsh attack by the Democratic National Committee and the President's political team because the quote: "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose," was taken completely out of context by the Romney campaign. The speech was given by presidential candidate Obama in 2008, and his full statement, quoting his opponent was: “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” This wasn't a sleazy Super PAC ad that Romney could dismiss as something he had no control over. This was an ad produced and run by his campaign, with his intoned statement at the end: "I'm Mitt Romney and I approve this message."

The message was an outright lie, in more ways than just the out of context statement attributed to candidate Obama. There is no evidence that the Affordable Care Act "is killing" jobs, since the major provisions of the law affecting employers don't even kick in until 2014. Moreover, independent labor and budget analysts dispute that the law will be the cause of any significant job losses in the future. What clearly would kill millions of jobs would be the continued rise in health care costs, a trend that the new health care law is designed to blunt.

So today, in somewhat sweet irony, the Romney campaign and the candidate himself are pushing back against the media's re-publication of an interview given this morning on CNN:



In a press gaggle later today, after being asked about this statement, Romney said:

“No no no no. I — no, no. You’ve got to take the whole sentence, all right, as opposed to saying, and then change it just a little bit, because then it sounds very different,” said Romney. “I’ve said throughout the campaign my focus, my concern, my energy is gonna be devoted to helping middle income people, all right? We have a safety net for the poor in, and if there are holes in it, I will work to repair that. And if there are people that are falling through the cracks I want to fix that. “

So the Massachusetts Governor reminded the press not to take words out of context.  He demanded of the media a standard of conduct that he doesn't impose on his own campaign.   Pathetic.