Did Obama Help Romney Find His Mojo?

The complaints from the GOP side of the aisle were getting louder all last week. There was real worry that Mitt Romney was blowing the campaign. His message was all over the place, wasn't answering attacks, and being too nice.  Quite frankly his call for an Obama apology was totally misdirected and set off a firestorm of calls for the GOP nominee to add a little Chicago politics into is campaign.

All that began to change last Friday when the President found another way to attack the successful, saying that they owe their success to big government

“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” he said. “The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet [I thought it was Al Gore] so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

This was another Joe the Plumber moment. Remember when Obama found himself on Joe the Plumber's driveway in 2008? He spoke about redistribution of income.  It was a gaffe only because he told America his real intentions.

Obama meant what he said on Friday, he truly believes that we owe our successes to government. He truly has no understanding of what made this country great.

Those words built a groundswell of indignation that fanned out from Roanoke, Virginia where they were uttered, across the country. When it reached Romney headquarters in Boston a switch was tuned on and the candidate moved from from defense to offense. Better yet, he launched an all out attack  against  Obama over the key issue of the campaign--the economy.

Yesterday the campaign trail saw a new Mitt Romney his stump speech attacked with focus and personality. Mitt had mojo.

(Note there are three videos in this post if you cannot see them please click here)

The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn't build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc didn’t build McDonald's, that Bill Gates didn’t build Microsoft, you go on the list, that Joe and his colleagues didn’t build this enterprise, to say something like that is not just foolishness, it is insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America and it’s wrong. And by the way, the President’s logic doesn’t just extend to the entrepreneurs that start a barber shop or a taxi operation or an oil field service business like this and a gas service business like this, it also extends to everybody in America that wants to lift themself up a little further, that goes back to school to get a degree and see if they can get a little better job, to somebody who wants to get some new skills and get a little higher income, to somebody who have may have dropped out that decides to get back in school and go for it. People who reach to try and lift themself up. The President would say, well you didn’t do that. You couldn’t have gotten to school without the roads that government built for you. You couldn’t have gone to school without teachers. So you are not responsible for that success. President Obama attacks success and therefore under President Obama we have less success and I will change that. I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think anyone could have said what he said who had actually started a business or been in a business. And my own view is that what the President said was both startling and revealing. I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a President of the United States.

There were some that called this Romney's best, most powerful stump speech of the campaign.

Today at a town hall in Bowling Green, Ohio Romney kept applying the pressure and the mojo.

"We have a jobs crisis in this country, a real emergency. Yet President Obama seems to have just given up on the economy.  He hasn’t convened a meeting with his jobs counsel in six months, but has held more than a hundred fundraisers for his campaign.  The only job he is interested in saving is his own."

"President Obama’s insult of business owners was shockingly revealing, insulting and dismissive America’s entrepreneurs. In a world where “somebody else” – government – builds businesses and creates prosperity, it’s makes sense to raise taxes on small business owners and create more and more layers of bureaucracy to manage the economy. I understand that we need to unleash the private sector and encourage small business owners, not punish them with higher taxes and burdensome regulations. This is the difference between a bottom-up economy driven by the innovative spirit of America and a top-down economy driven by the government."

"What made President Obama’s comments so insightful is that they reflect the policies he’s pursued in office – policies that reward people for who they know, not what they know. While he gave taxpayer money and special carve-outs to friends, donors, supporters, and special interest groups, the middle class has been working harder for less. This has to end, and it will when I am president."

And if to add an exclamation point to Romney's words, today Jay Carney revealed that the president's jobs council hasn't met for six months saying that Obama's been really busy. What he didn't say is what he's been busy with...campaigning, fundraising, golf. What the hell is more important than Jobs and the economy?

 

If Romney becomes our next president, historians may very well look back on this week as the turning point.  This was the week that Barack Obama voiced his true feelings, spurring Mitt Romney to find his campaign stride. Lets hope he keeps it up!