Romney Stirs a Hornets’ Nest

Last week, Mitt Romney released an ad using a quote from the 2008 campaign in which Obama says, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” The only problem? The quote is egregiously out-of-context: Obama was in fact describing what the McCain team was saying about their own campaign. The Obama administration called out the Romney campaign for the distortion but Romney stuck to his guns.

It appears that Romney’s jab has elicited a strong response from the Democratic National Committee as they released this ad today:

It’s pretty devastating. The Kerry campaign failed in part because of Kerry’s inconsistencies on the Iraq War – inconsistencies that were more explicable considering the faulty information disseminated by the Bush administration. In contrast, Romney has flip-flopped on several issues that are at the heart of national debate and are much clearer than the Iraq War. It’s difficult to see how a candidate could survive an ad like that in a normal campaign but, of course, the high unemployment rate and widespread (justified) pessimism about the economy will make 2012 anything but a normal campaign.