Romney the Pathetic blasts Obama over recession

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Mitt Romney really is pathetic.

And what's really utterly pathetic is not so much how desperately hard he's trying to be a strident movement conservative, because while he's certainly doing that to some degree he's also playing simultaneously to the somewhat more moderate GOP establishment by presenting himself as what seems to be the lone sober voice in a sea of utter insanity, but how he's trying desperately to join the Republican anti-Obama chorus by lashing out at a president with whom in reality he has often been in agreement.

For example, he said yesterday, clarifying previously ambiguous comments, that Obama has made the economy worse, that "the recession is deeper because of our president." Even then, though, he wasn't clear. Obama has apparently both "made the recession worse" and made the recovery, such as there has been one, "slower and more painful."

In other words, he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Or, rather, he presumably does but has gotten himself trapped in his own bullshit spin, not clear about what exactly his talking points are. Are things worse or is the recovery too slow? They can't be both. But Romney, poor pathetic Romney, can't seem to pick his preferred line.

Of course, the recovery has been slow, but how has that been Obama's fault? Obama inherited a terrible economic situation. The recession ended several months after he took office, but he did what he could, early in his presidency, to get the economy moving again. And if there is blame to hand out for the slowness of the recovery, it must be handed to the Republicans who objected to Obama's (and the Democrats') stimulus, or at least to the size of it, and prevented the government from injecting enough money into the economy to get it going again quickly enough. Romney for his part, and to his credit, supported the stimulus, but Republicans generally were the obstacle.

Obama then pushed for the bank and auto bailouts, which, however unpopular (and imperfect in application), certainly pulled the economy back from the brink. If anything, Obama prevented the situation from getting even worse. There was objection on both sides to the bailouts, but, again, the Republicans were the obstacle to recovery, not the Democrats and certainly not Obama, who worked (and led) within the limits he faced to get something done at a time when something was desperately needed. Who knows what the situation would now be like if Republicans had gotten their way.

Does Romney know this? Probably. He's an economic conservative who generally prefers trickle-down economics, but, if I may be generous, he's not a complete idiot. But that also means he knows he has to play the anti-Obama game to have a chance at the nomination. Sure, he's the frontrunner, but he's hardly a secure one. He still needs to play to the extremist GOP base, to the primary voters and their puppetmasters who want Obama's head on a pike.

That's what he's trying to do, but you can see just how bad he is at it, which suggests both that he's a bad attack dog, or at least that he's bad at faking it, and that he doesn't really believe what he's saying.

Like Jon Huntsman, a far less pathetic figure (actually an admirable conservative, if I may say so), Romney would probably prefer to remain civil. But he knows he can't, not if he wants to win, and so what we're getting from Romney the Pathetic is an act that rings anything but true and sincere.

But hey, at least we're not talking about Romneycare. Right?