Romney: I Never Said Things are Worse, I said Obama Made Them Worse

After months of saying President Obama made the recession worse, last week Big Love Mitt Romney reversed course and said he never said things are worse.  Actually, he most certainly did say that.

Mitt Romney June 2, 2011: “Barack Obama has failed America. When he took office, the economy was in recession. He made it worse,” Romney told the crowd in Stratham, N.H.

Again, last week, Big Love Romney told a crowd in New Hampshire, "'Obama did not cause the recession, but worsened it 'through a series of actions which hurt the economy in a time he needed it to be taking off.'”

He added: “The recovery is extraordinarily anemic because of things he did that made the recovery worse.”

Saying things are worse is genuinely insane.  Saying the recovery is worse neglects the simple fact there was no recovery to make worse. The recession didn't end until after Obama took office.  Thus the recovery didn't begin until then too.  Precisely, he could not have made the recovery worse because he didn't inherit a recovery.  He inherited a shit pile.

Now if he wants to say had the president done this or that the recovery would have been stronger is a respectable argument. Except doing that would also be kind of hard for Romney since in 2008 he actually called for a Republican Stimulus Plan that is nearly identical to the president's.  But that's down the memory hole!!!

*Update:

Steve Benen gets the day's creativity award:

"What we have here, ladies and gentleman, is a true rarity. Behold, Mitt Romney has taken campaign deception to the Inception level — only instead of a dream within a dream with in another dream, we have Romney lying, then lying about the lie, then lying about having lied about the other lie."

Yes, America, the depths the GOP will bring us in the next 16 months will be excruciating.