By M. Ulric Killion
Photo Source: The cover from the Politics section of the Huffington Post, April 15, 2012; Elise Foley, Timothy Geithner Calls Mitt Romney Claims 'Misleading, ‘Ridiculous’, Huffington Post, April, 15, 2012.
As reported by Elise Foley (Huffington Post), on April 15, 2012, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner verbally thrashed Willard Mitt Romney and his handlers for what he rightly characterizes as their “misleading and ridiculous” claims.
In this particular instance, though the misleading and ridiculous claims by Romney’s campaign only seem to be growing in numbers, Geithner is speaking to their recent claim regarding what the Washington Post labeled as Willard’s “amazing statistic.”
According to this “amazing statistic,” during President Barack Obama's time in office, Romney attempted to claim, though an “amazing statistic” now discredited by many experts, that 92.3 percent of the jobs lost during this period were held by women, which he said was “the real war on women.”
As in earlier periods, the problem of his claim being “misleading and ridiculous” notwithstanding, it is simply another instance of Romney’s campaign at political gaming via playing with statistics or numbers.
Foley, like others, reported that, “The statement was promptly debunked by experts who pointed out that more men have lost jobs since the beginning of the recession, and that statistics can be easy to manipulate.”
Photo Source: U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Elise Foley, Timothy Geithner Calls Mitt Romney Claims 'Misleading, ‘Ridiculous’, Huffington Post, April, 15, 2012; AP.
In this respect, Geithner rightly characterized the Romney campaign as making “misleading and ridiculous” claims. Geithner also rightly maintains that by employing “misleading and ridiculous” claims, especially by political gaming with statistics, Romney and his campaign team effectually reduces the quality of debate over economic policy.
In other words, as a consequence of Romney’s political gaming, and sadly for an American populace in search of real answers to real problems, the quality of debate he now offers concerning economic policy, and quoting Geitner, is “really terrible.”
This is a situation only exacerbated by the fact that Willard Mitt Romney is doing so for the purpose of closing a polling gap with potential women voters. One could even, though sad for American politics, characterize Romney’s efforts as a sort of failed attempt to flip-flap or present a new “etch-a-sketch” political moment in his campaign.
As we hear more and more from Romney’s campaign, American voters learn less from Romney’s campaign efforts, while also sadly learning that he simply doesn’t get it. This is because, for many of us, on the real issue of women’s rights he remains clueless. Romney’s campaign presents the unfolding of a truism that he neither understands, nor wishes to embrace the real issues and real problems of women’s rights.
Never mind what genuinely appears to be an assault by the GOP on women’s rights, for Romney women appear to be no more than a commodity that he would regale to the domestic.
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See also The Republican Conundrum
All Rights Reserved by M. Ulric Killion, 2012.
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