Appearing as the only guest on Fox News Sunday today, Marco Rubio, the Fox News choice for Vice President, was asked by Chris Wallace about Romney’s ludicrously off-base comment last week that a “normal recovery” should be adding 500,000 jobs a month. Rubio had no explanation other than to praise Romney for having “high expectations.” Not surprisingly, Wallace let Rubio slide.
At about 3:00, Wallace – an obvious Romney supporter – worked into the interview a Romney ad attacking Obama’s jobs numbers. After it aired, Wallace asked Rubio, “Romney says that job growth should be 500,000 jobs a month, not the 115,000 it was in last month, and that the unemployment rate should be 4%, not the 8.1% it was last month. But here are a couple of statistics, Senator. The fact is that this country has achieved 500,000 job-a-month job growth only two months in the last 20 years and in fact as governor of Massachusetts, Romney never had 4% unemployment.”
Rubio gave a gobbledygook answer:
“Well, first of all, we want a president with high expectations. We want a president that understands that the way things are now are not acceptable and that we have to make them better. Second, I think the steeper your fall has been, in essence the steeper the recession is, the fast and the sharper the recovery should be. And I think that’s what Governor Romney is talking about and rightfully so.
Look, I have faith. There’s nothing wrong with the American people. And the American people are the backbone of this economy. They haven’t run out of good ideas. They haven’t run out of ideas for businesses they want to open. The American people haven’t forgotten how to create jobs but they do need a government whose policies make it easier for them to do these things, not harder. And if you look at the president’s record over the last three and a half years, it is a record of policies that make it harder for Americans to start a business or grow an existing business and thereby create new jobs. So I’m glad that we have a nominee who has high expectations for the American economy ‘cause the American people have high expectations for the American economy.”
Say, what? Romney wasn’t speaking about his faith in or aspirations for Americans, he was comparing Obama’s jobs numbers to what he (Romney) thought they should be:
We should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs created per month. This is way, way, way off from what should happen in a normal recovery.
But instead of pressing Rubio to explain his ridiculous response or challenging his "interpretation" of Romney's comments, Wallace gave him another opening to attack Obama: “When you say that the president’s policies have made it harder to start a new business or hire people, give me two examples where you think the Obama policies make it harder and the Romney policies would make it easier.”
Wallace asked some good questions on immigration and tolerance (or lack thereof) in the Republican Party. But he also handed Rubio other opportunities to attack the Obama administration presented in the form of a softball question, such as:
Senator, what do you think of Joe Biden, especially when it comes to foreign policy?
But there was also plenty of time for Rubio to give a pitch for why he’s qualified to be Vice President, I mean Senator, and to add,
“I certainly am not the most experienced person in Washington, D.C., but by the same token, I certainly have experience serving in government and particularly in the legislative branch in one of the largest states and one of the more complex states in the country in terms of public policy. And the good news is that every day that goes by, I gain more experience on these things. But I would also say this: There is a point of diminishing return on Washington experience.”
So yup, this guy wants to VP.
Also, if I heard Rubio complain one more time about President Obama “dividing” the country - as if Fox and the Republicans do anything but – I might have thrown something at the TV.
Not according to Grover Norquist:
“All we have to do is replace Obama. … We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. … We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.
Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/13/1064417/-Grover-Norquist-on-the-GOP-candidates-All-we-need-is-someone-who-can-handle-a-pen-
.
Speculation is the Business Model in America. It hires no one, it produces nothing and it devalues work. Romney imagines 500,000 dollars, not people, as an average good month of speculation for himself. Are you in on it?
And none of the regular FoxNoise audience will ever remember Romney’s original comments. (I think I mentioned, in a comment on an earlier thread, that FoxNoise viewers tend to have goldfish-like memories. That’s the main reason why FoxNoise has to repeat all their talking points so frequently—so the regular FoxNoise viewer [RFNV] remembers what he’s supposed to believe; if FoxNoise didn’t do so, the RFNV would be on to the next distraction—whether a football game or a NASCAR race or a virus-laden “lesbian” pornclip.)
Of course, there is the slight deal that what’s unacceptable for a Democrat is not only acceptable for, but absolutely expected of, a Republicon.