With a little more than a month before the New Hampshire Republican primary, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has released his first ad of the campaign, a blistering attack on President Obama's economic record:
The ad hinges on a quip from Obama's 2008 campaign, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose." The problem, of course, is that Obama was quoting the words of a McCain strategist. At best, Romney's choice to put them in the mouth of Obama is disingenuous; at worst, it's an outright lie. And given the extent to which the rest of the ad relies on various distortions -– Romney decries the high foreclosure rate despite his preference for a process that keeps homeowners underwater -– "lying" is a fair way to describe his rhetoric.
This isn't the first instance of dishonesty from the Romney campaign, and it won't be the last. To wit, after the Obama campaign attacked this ad as "deceitful," Romney spokesperson Gail Gitcho responded with this rejoinder:
The White House doesn't want to talk about the economy and continues to attempt to distract voters from President Obama's abysmal economic record.
As ThinkProgress notes, this ignores the four months of Obama's presidency in which he's done nothing but push the American Jobs Act to Congress and the public. If there hasn't been progress, that has less to do with Obama and everything to do with the Republican Party's categorical opposition to anything that could improve the economy.
