Economic Number Spin Begins In Pres. Race
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – The 2012 general election is still in the early stages, but if the last 48 hours are indication; the election promises to be an especially brutal partisan fight between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
Wednesday the war over female voters took center stage after Democratic operative Hillary Rosen said that Ann Romney, Mitt's wife, hadn't "worked a day in her life." Mrs. Romney is a stay at home wife who has raised five boys. Both sides immediately jumped on the comments saying they were out of line.
It may end up being the only time both Republicans and Democrats will agree during the 2012 election cycle. It was also significant as Republicans seek to regain the support of women they lost during the fight against covering birth control.
Mitt Romney began that quest earlier Wednesday morning when he claimed in multiple appearances that women made up 92.3 percent of the people who have lost jobs since President Obama took office. The claim was both true and false.
The accuracy of the quote depends on when you begin to measure the job losses under President Obama. Typically, it takes one to two months for a president's economic policies to take effect and usually roughly 30 to 60 days is when economists begin measuring a president's economic impact.
Using that metric, the majority of the job losses happened during the months of January and February of 2009. Those numbers would seriously undercut the argument that Romney is making that a total of 1.6 million jobs have been lost under President Obama.
Romney's campaign has sought to start measuring job losses from January 1, 2009, nearly a month before Obama took office, which is how Romney came to his number of 1.6 million job losses since January 1, 2009.
Using the metric of measuring from March 1, after one full month in office, President Obama's administration has seen a net job loss of 102,000, or 484,000 jobs gained if you take out government jobs lost from the equation.
The argument over jobs, the economy, the economic recovery, and every other topic is just beginning as it's still more than six months until election day 2012.
