Romney Struggles with Good News About Jobs

"We can do better. These numbers cannot hide the fact that President Obama's policies have prevented a true economic recovery."

- GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney, commenting on the undeniably positive jobs report from January.

In the skeazy world of presidential elections, politicians and their hench-persons frequently attempt to establish something as "true," by simply saying it over and over again. The repetition method is often effective in subverting or slanting the truth (remember John Kerry, the French flip-flopping traitor to his country?), but in the face of indisputable statistical evidence to the contrary, regurgitating the same falsities day after day amounts to little more than pathetic and transparent rhetoric.

Under President Obama's policies, the facts are thus:

• 243,000 jobs were created in January 2012.
• Job creation has been positive for 23 consecutive months.
• The unemployment rate has reached the lowest point in three years.

Considering the complete absence of job growth that existed when the President took over (see the red segment of the chart above), the only rational conclusion one can draw is that the trend in job creation has been overwhelmingly positive under President Obama. Those are the facts.

Faced with ongoing good news about job creation, Mitt Romney and the GOP can no longer question that an economic recovery is taking place. They are left to feebly assert that while the numbers look pretty good, they may not represent a genuine economic recovery. The party out of power in the White House once again finds themselves in that awkward place where what is good for the nation is not good for their electoral ambitions. Republicans can argue that the recovery isn't "true" (whatever that means) or that it isn't occurring fast enough, but the reality is that it is happening.

In November 2012, when faced with a choice between the guys whose policies brought on total economic clusterfuck, or the guy whose policies are bringing us out of the funk - however slow, but steady - I'll take the latter.