Paul Krugman asks, "Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are?" Answer: Plenty, plenty stupid

No, the "D" on President-in-waiting Willard Inc.'s
stylish headgear doesn't stand for "Democrat."

"[Last week's] Ohio speech was a perfect illustration of the way the Romney campaign is banking on amnesia, on the hope that voters don’t remember that Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was already in free fall."

-- Paul Krugman, in his NYT column today,
"The Amnesia Candidate"

by Ken

Just to be clear that our Paul isn't asleep at the wheel, in his NYT column today, he follows up the question I've put in the title of this post, "Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are?," by noting: "If you’ve been following his campaign from the beginning, that’s a question you have probably asked many times."

Of course it hasn't been just the Willard Inc. 2012 Campaign Juggernaut that's been dedicated the proposition that Americans are dumber than dirt. It was the unifying theme of the whole Republican death march to a presidential nomination. Admittedly, many of the other candidates encouraged the feeling that they're just as stupid as the poor sumbitches they were trying to inveigle into supporting their know-nothing candidacies, whereas whatever else one may say about the Incorporated Willard, he does seem to have a working brain, one he simply chooses to use for obfuscatory purposes when he mounts the campaign stump.

Now Willard the Pretend Wingnut has finally been able to emerge as the Unitary Willard, candidate of all the sociopathic right-wing billionares, he has finally been able to advance into general-election campaign mode, free to target not those dregs of humanity who comprised the 2012 Republican presidential field but a Democratic president who goodness knows should be vulnerable to all sorts of attacks -- but none vaguely resembling those being leveled by the new phase of the newly tooled Willard-for-President Model of the Right-Wing Noise Machine. And while holding a candidate to his campaign promises is an utterly legitimate mode of campaign discourse, it's that much more loathsome when the discussion is built entirely on lies about the situation in 2008 and the situation in 2012.

Mr. Romney constantly talks about job losses under Mr. Obama. Yet all of the net job loss took place in the first few months of 2009, that is, before any of the new administration's policies had time to take effect. So the Ohio speech was a perfect illustration of the way the Romney campaign is banking on amnesia, on the hope that voters don't remember that Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was already in free fall.

How does the campaign deal with people who point out the awkward reality that all of the "Obama" job losses took place before any Obama policies had taken effect? The fallback argument -- which was rolled out when reporters asked about the factory closure -- is that even though Mr. Obama inherited a deeply troubled economy, he should have fixed it by now. . . .

I guess accusing Mr. Obama of not doing enough to promote recovery is a better argument than blaming him for the effects of Bush policies. However, it’s not much better, since Mr. Romney is essentially advocating a return to those very same Bush policies. And he’s hoping that you don’t remember how badly those policies worked.

For the Bush era didn’t just end in catastrophe; it started off badly, too. Yes, Mr. Obama’s jobs record has been disappointing — but it has been unambiguously better than Mr. Bush’s over the comparable period of his administration.

Private-sector employment, PK notes,

has recovered almost all the ground lost in the administration's early months. That compares favorably with the Bush era: as of March 2004, private employment was still 2.4 million below its level when Mr. Bush took office.

Oh, and where have those mass layoffs of schoolteachers been taking place? Largely in states controlled by the G.O.P.: 70 percent of public job losses have been either in Texas or in states where Republicans recently took control.

Which brings our Paul to a point that I don't think can be emphasized enough, though the likelihood is that it won't be emphasized at all.

Mr. Romney wants you to attribute all of the shortfalls in economic policy since 2009 (and some that happened in 2008) to the man in the White House, and forget both the role of Republican-controlled state governments and the fact that Mr. Obama has faced scorched-earth political opposition since his first day in office. Basically, the G.O.P. has blocked the administration's efforts to the maximum extent possible, then turned around and blamed the administration for not doing enough.

Howie and I have been only two of the legion of observers who have been screaming bloody murder all through the Obama administration about this barely even disguised strategy of the GOP disloyal opposition: to do everything it their power to prevent the administration from enacting serious policy initiatives, all the while cheering on every bit of deterioration wrought on the economy by their relentless obstructionism.

Which, again, isn't to say that we're satisfied with the kind of fight the administration has put up against the GOP stonewall, not to the mention the extent to which its policies have themselves been alarmingly continuous with the Bush regime's. Here's Paul again:

[A]m I saying that Mr. Obama did everything he could, and that everything would have been fine if he hadn't faced political opposition? By no means. Even given the political constraints, the administration did less than it could and should have in 2009, especially on housing. Furthermore, Mr. Obama was an active participant in Washington's destructive "pivot" away from jobs to a focus on deficit reduction.

And the administration has suffered repeatedly from complacency -- taking a few months of good news as an excuse to rest on its laurels rather than hammering home the need for more action. It did that in 2010, it did it in 2011, and to a certain extent it has been doing the same thing this year too. So there is a valid critique one can make of the administration's handling of the economy.

But . . . .

Yes, of course, he's leading up to a Whopping Big But:

But that's not the critique Mr. Romney is making. Instead, he's basically attacking Mr. Obama for not acting as if George Bush had been given a third term. Are the American people -- and perhaps more to the point, the news media -- forgetful enough for that attack to work? I guess we'll find out.

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