Trite & Untrue, Weird Willard’s Obama Attacks Fall Flat

Mitt Romney’s Colorado concession speech was as inspiring as a corpse.

Romney Concession Speech, Colorado

But weirder.

Between congratulating his supporters for clapping—not doing Olympic back flips through fiery rings, just clapping—and uttering some meteorologically redundant gibberish about how February winters are cold in Denver, Romney appeared to have discovered Rick Perry’s stash of meds.

“He looked understandably down,” Politico’s Roger Simon observed after Romney lost in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota. “(H)e read his concession speech from two teleprompters as if he were seeing it for the first time—which he may have been.”

In a monotone monologue that might have rung with passion on paper but which failed to keep supporters from unapologetically fiddling with their smartphones throughout the live version of the speech, the former Massachusetts governor attempted to lay blame for the Great Recession at the feet of President Obama with a series of lethargic and haphazard punches.

Romney quoted Obama during the 2008 Democratic convention as saying that, compared to Republicans, “Democrats had a different measure of what constitutes progress.” Naming off each “measure of progress” like they were a mockery of the patriotic and capitalistic everywhere, he said:

More Americans have lost their jobs during President Obama’s term than during any other president in modern history…(T)he median income has fallen by around 10 percent… (and) the average duration of unemployment has more than doubled and 14 million more people are on food stamps.

Between each joust, Romney said, “By his own definition, President Obama has failed. We will succeed.”

Four times he said it.

“We will succeed.”

“We will succeed.”

“We will succeed.”

“We will succeed.”

And every time he said it, an enthusiastic supporter behind him giggled at an incoming text message.

A yawner of a rally (Rich Addicks, NYT)

Warned by his campaign not to run on his unimpressive jobs record as governor, Romney has resorted to fictionalized one-liners meant to divert attention away from the effects of the president’s economic policies.

Like the fact that nearly 8 million jobs were lost before the Recovery Act took effect, and since it took effect the “Obama economy” has created jobs every month for nearly two years straight. Or the fact that, as the president noted in his State of the Union address, job growth in 2011 was the highest its been since 2005.

As for the “Obama is the food stamp president” line of attack, it’s pure bullshit that has already been debunked, so repeating it is kind of pathetic.

Romney is basing his campaign on a promise to return to the policies that led up to the recession, and it has fallen flat, as anyone could expect if they can remember how inspiring John Kerry’s “We can do better” slogan was in 2004.

For a guy who received 78-percent fewer votes in Colorado this year than he did in 2008, maybe a dampened mood should be expected. And finishing second in Missouri with 108,000 fewer voters than he managed to wrangle in 2008, a decrease of 170 percent, probably didn’t help either. Not to belabor the point, but Romney also finished third in Minnesota, a state he won in 2008, with a 216-percent decrease in support.

So yeah.

“Obama failed. We will succeed.”

It’s tired, generic, and false, but maybe that’s as much as you can expect from a presidential candidate whose opponents now consistently refer to him as the “Massachusetts moderate” and whose supporters are less excited about voting for him this year as the frontrunner than they were in 2008, when he was a third-tier “also ran” candidate.