Mitt’s jaw dropper

So I was on the road and off the grid yesterday, living the way we Americans used to live (that is to say, without 24/7 digital connectivity), when perchance I entered a wi-fi zone long enough to check on the latest press releases from the Romney campaign.Isn’t that the first thing that we all do in such circumstances? Check out Mitt Romney’s press releases?OK, maybe it’s just me. But I’m here to tell you that I was richly rewarded. This was his new talking point, an attempted defense of his economic record in Massachusetts, and I swear I’m not making this up:”Governor Romney Inherited An Economy That Was Losing Jobs Each Month And Left Office With An Economy That Was Adding Jobs Each Month. After taking office at a time when the state was losing thousands of jobs every month, Governor Romney’s focus on fiscal responsibility helped create an environment where job growth returned to Massachusetts…” Team Romney bold-faced that first sentence.But wait a second…The mind reels…The jaw drops…Hasn’t Romney spent the last year ridiculing President Obama for pointing out that he inherited an historic recession from George W. Bush? Hasn’t Romney blasted Obama whenever he fingers Bush for leaving him with a mess to clean up? Yes indeed.Yet now, here’s Romney making the exact same argument on his own behalf, blaming his Bay State predecessor for leaving him with a mess to clean up.Basically, the new Romney message is, “Yeah, the statistics show that Massachusetts on my watch was 47th in the nation in job creation, but that’s an unfair measurement. You can’t blame me for the hole that I had to dig out of. That was my predecessor’s fault. I want you to focus instead on the jobs I created later on.”Which is what Obama has been saying all along. In essence: “You can’t blame me for the hole that I had to dig out of, for the hemorrhaging of jobs that took place during my first year in office, because the Great Recession was my predecessor’s fault. I want you to focus on the fact that we’ve since created four million private sector jobs.”In fact, you could take the first sentence of Romney’s press release and tweak it this way: “President Obama Inherited An Economy That Was Losing Jobs Each Month But Now Presides Over An Economy That Has Added Jobs Each Month.”No matter. The next time Obama talks about inheriting an economic disaster, Romney will probably blast him for making excuses anyway – the same kind of excuses that Romney is now peddling about his own Massachusetts tenure, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he has undercut his fundamental case against the president.Because if Romney wants to be judged only on the basis of the jobs he created after his state hit bottom, then surely he should judge Obama only on the basis of the jobs he created after the nation hit bottom. Right?——-Follow me on Twitter, @dickpolman1