The unemployment rate in Massachusetts had doubled from January 2001 to January 2003, the year Romney took office, and was continuing to increase at a fast rate. He implemented pro-growth policies and programs. By summer the increase in unemployment had stopped and by fall unemployment was dropping. [13] While Massachusetts was 50th, or nearly the worst in the nation in the increase in unemployment rates the year that just ended when he took office, he got it down to 38th place by the end of his first year in office. [14] The unemployment rate continued to rapidly drop for nearly two years, hit a plateau for about a year and a half, then started dropping again at the end of his term of office (see chart below). The year he left office (2007), the trend in Massachusetts’ unemployment rate was 12th in the nation [15], a big improvement from the 50th place it was in the year he won office.
re: ilovesarah2012: Mass. unemployment
Your post should become an outline for a Romney campaign ad.
Romney should be able to respond with his own ads in a way that neutralizes Obama’s attacks. With effective rebuttal ads by Romney, these attacks ads could even backfire on Obama and make him look deceptive to the voters. The facts are that during Romney’s term he turned a large budget deficit into two budget surpluses in his last two years.
On the issue of state debt, Romney should focus on the upgrade of Massachusetts’ debt rating that occurred while he was governor (while US federal debt has been downgraded during Obama’s term):
http://race42012.com/2011/08/05/sp-downgrades-american-debt/
The main reasons why Massachusetts has high levels of debt per capita are because that state also has extensive high-quality state-funded infrastructure (roads, bridges, water systems, etc) and has a very high average income level, which enables MA to easily service more debt per capita than other states. Infrastructure also costs much more to build in Massachusetts than in many other states because of higher labor costs resulting from the generally very high average income level in Massachusetts.
That 47th ranking in job creation from the Obama attack ad just doesn’t sound right to me. The Romney team should find out exactly how that ranking was calculated and check all the calculations. Make sure the calculations were done in terms of percentages of each state’s population and not in absolute numbers. Check the starting dates and ending dates for all the employment statistics used in this attack ad. Liberals are generally extremely deceptive and they may have used some intentionally or unintentionally mistaken calculations to arrive at that 47th ranking.
After thoroughly checking that calculation, the Romney team needs to compile all the state employment statistics and start ranking them with different methods than the one used in the Obama attack ad. It appears that Romney essentially walked into an economic disaster in MA on his first day in office, which made it difficult for much net job growth to occur in MA within the next four years. So one new way to look at this situation could be to calculate the percentage of jobs gained or lost in MA and all other states in the year before Romney took office and in Romney’s last year in office. Then calculate the improvement in that percentage (net change) from the year before he took office until his last year. (For example, if a state lost 2% of it’s jobs in the first year but gained 1.5% in total employment in the last year, that’s a net improvement of 3.5%) Finally, rank the 50 states by those improvements in job growth during Romney’s four-year term. Measured that way, Massachusetts could easily be in the top five or ten states in the net improvement in job growth. If so, then run that high ranking in a campaign ad that neutralizes Obama’s attack ad, without mentioning Obama’s ad, of course. Just put conflicting information into the voters’ minds which cancels out the impact from the Obama attack ad.
Well, you get the idea. There are many ways to rack and stack employment statistics and many ways to measure improvement during a governor’s term. So the Romney campaign needs to get to work on ways to counter the Obama attack ads, and if those attack ads are using incorrect calculations, then of course nail them for using bad numbers.
Now that would make a nice campaign ad.
A line slowly moving across the graph with the key dates highlighted at the top half of the screen.
Then the lower half of the screen duplicates that, but with Obummers numbers.
Would knock his ad right out of the water - and I bet the term “swiftboated” would come up...:^)