For the past few weeks, the majority of leaders in the Republican Party have spoken out against Democrats' charges that the GOP is waging a war on women. Likely republican nominee, Mitt Romney, has now attempted to turn the tables on the matter, recently stating that the real war on women has been waged by President Obama. More specifically, he said, "Women account for 92.3% of the jobs lost under Obama." Of course, there's a lot more to this story and number than Romney is telling his listeners.
First off, fact-checking site Politifact.com graded Romney's statement as "mostly false," stating that "...The numbers are accurate but quite misleading. First, Obama cannot be held entirely accountable for the employment picture on the day he took office, just as he could not be given credit if times had been booming. Second, by choosing figures from January 2009, months into the recession, the statement ignored the millions of jobs lost before then, when most of the job loss fell on men. In every recession, men are the first to take the hit, followed by women. It's a historical pattern, not an effect of Obama's policies. There is a small of truth to the claim, but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False."
Using Romney's logic, if Person A buys an old, beat-up car from Person B, wanting to spiff it up a bit to transform it back into the classic it once was and on the first morning as owner of the car, Person A can't get it to start, is that then his or her fault? According to Romney, it would be, but this would make absolutely no sense whatsoever. He also ignores some facts. First off, the recession started in December of 2007. If we look at the job-loss numbers from then until Obama's inauguration in January of 2009, men lost 3,264,000 jobs, while women lost 1,157,000. If Romney wants to be consistent in his reasoning, former-President Bush was obviously waging a war on men during that time. Romney also ignores the fact that both men and women have experienced net-job gains in each of the past 10 months under President Obama.
This reminds me of a story I'm about to make up, where a college football coach, we'll call him Dubya, finds his team down 42-0 at halftime. At this point, he decides to hand the head coaching duties to another gentleman who goes by the name Barry. Just before the start of the 3rd quarter, Dubya goes up to the booth to join a couple announcers and gives his take on the situation, saying, "Barry just hasn't done his job. He hasn't prepared his team and they are paying the consequences. It's a shame. That's a great group of kids right there. When this game is through, I really think this school will need to think about replacing him as the coach. They deserve better than what he's given them; that's for sure."
Head coach Barry then leads his team back to a 42-42 tie late in the 4th quarter, yet Dubya is still in the booth clamoring away on the 42-0 hole the team had been in earlier in the game. Yeah, it really makes sense when one doesn't think about it...
Comments
Post a Comment