“…It didn’t work here so I’m not quite sure why he thinks it might work nationally…”
For republicans, that’s a feature, not a bug.
The Obama campaign has a new video on Mitt Romney’s (r) record in Massachusetts:
The transcript:
[2002]
[Mitt Romney ran for Governor of Massachusetts…
and he made a lost of promises.]Mitt Romney (r): …We’re gonna have a stronger economy because I’m gonna be governor…
…I have experience in the private sector…
…I know how jobs are created and how jobs are lost…
…I’m gonna work tirelessly as governor, bring more good jobs to Massachusetts…
…I know how to solve a budget problem…
…I stand very clearly for lowering, uh, the taxes…
[Sound familiar?]
[Here’s Romney now.]…
…[2011]
…Jobs and the economy is what I know…
…I spent my life in the private sector…
…I know why jobs come and why they go…
…My number one job will be to see that America once again is number one in job creation…
[2012]
…I will finally get America on track to have a balanced budget…
..I will cut marginal taxes across the board…
[So what can we expect from a Romney presidency?]
…people want to know what I stand for, they can look at my record as governor…
John Barret: …Mitt Romney was not an effective leader in Massachusetts. And the proof is in the pudding…
Jay Kaufman: …I had worked only under Republican governors…
…and I worked really well with all of the others, but there was really not much working with Mitt Romney…
Rob Dolan: When Governor Romney became governor of Massachusetts many of the issues that our country faces were at our door step, high debt, the need for jobs, the need to support a working middle class. There were great opportunities and there was great hope that Governor Romney could deliver. He didn’t deliver…
[Jobs]
[2002]
Mitt Romney: …We need a job revolution, we need to have more jobs in Massachusetts, more good jobs. That’s the key to our future…
Karen Spilka: There was that promise, uh, and hope that Romney would deliver with jobs and grow the economy here in Massachusetts and that did not materialize.
Jack Yunits: …Massachusetts growth stopped, companies stopped coming, that new jobs were not being created….
Jeffrey Sanchez: …We knew that we were losing manufacturing jobs and he never found any solutions to try and figure out how do we keep them…
…By the time that Romney left office we were forty-seventh in the nation in terms of job growth…
Rob Dolan: During Mitt Romney’s tenure as governor wages dropped five percent his first two years which really had a very negative effect throughout Massachusetts…
[Taxes & Fees]
[2002]
Mitt Romney: …I will fight to keep our tax rate, not going up, but to keep it where it is and then bring it down by the end of my first term…
Jay Kaufman: What we heard from Mitt Romney during the campaign was the no new taxes pledge…
…And he found very quickly once he was in office that he couldn’t deliver on any services without having sufficient resources, so he raised our taxes by raising our fees…
Rob Dolan: …But a rose by any other name is absolutely still a rose. Fees are an increase out of the pockets of every Massachusetts resident. That’s a tax. Let’s call it what it is…
Carl Sciortino: …Struggling working families, they were paying more under his administration. They’re paying at the Department of Motor vehicles, they’re paying for marriage fess and burial fees…
John Barret: …Every fee that he put in place or increased impacted mainly the average middle income person…
Carl Sciortino: …The only place that I remember Mitt Romney actually cutting taxes was for the two hundred and seventy-eight wealthiest families in our state…
[Debt]
[2002]
Mitt Romney: …I’ve indicated what my position is on how to balance the budget and it’s by cutting out waste and inefficiency and taking advantage of great efficiencies that I think we can capture…
Jay Kaufman: …under the Romney administration we accumulated the greatest debt build up of any state in the country, that’s after a campaign promise to do exactly the opposite…
Carl Sciortino: …He used debt to pay for annual operations costs. That’s like paying your, your rent on your credit card. And that was Mitt Romney’s way of paying for the way we maintained our highways, the way we cleaned our streets. It was a really flawed way of addressing basic operations, was to go deeper and deeper into debt…
Rob Dolan:…Governor Romney’s plan for America is the same plan that he sold to the people of Massachusetts in two thousand two, less government, less debt, better business, and less taxes. The result was the opposite, more fees, less business, more debt, bigger government here in Boston.
John Barret:…He just did not get the job done. He just didn’t walk the talk…
Carl Sciortino:…There are time when I watch Mitt Romney saying the exact same things now that he said here in Massachusetts in two thousand and two, in a robotic way that is completely hollow. It didn’t work here so I’m not quite sure why he thinks it might work nationally…
John Barret:…Romney economics doesn’t work. It didn’t work in Massachusetts and it’s not gonna work in Washington…
[RomneyEconomics.com]
It’s the record, stoopid…