Gingrich Is Right About One Thing: Romney Is A Liar

DonkeyHotey

Newt Gingrich called his fellow Republican a liar, and the media, including the venerable New York Times, reports this as evidence that Newt is frustrated with the state of the campaign and as a reminder of what a nasty and caustic guy Newt can be.  But, as Steve Benen correctly notes, the real story here is not that Newt called Mitt out for "not telling the truth," but that reporters seem taken aback by this statement and have not come to this obvious conclusion themselves.

Case in point is Romney's false claim that 2 million jobs have been lost under the Obama Administration, which he repeatedly asserts and about which he is rarely challenged.  As Greg Sargent explains:

Romney is taking into account the fact that the economy continued hemorraghing jobs at a furious rate after Obama took office — before Obama’s stimulus passed. But the figures show that once it became law, monthly job loss declined over time, and turned around in the spring of 2010, after which the private sector added jobs for over 20 straight months, totaling around 2.2 million of them.

Paul Krugman provides this handy chart to show how misleading Romney's assertion really is:

As Krugman concludes:

Does this look to you like a president who “lost jobs”, or like a president who inherited an economy in free fall? You can accuse Obama of not doing enough to promote recovery — and I have (although the biggest villain here was Romney’s own party). But to claim that Obama caused the job loss is indefensible.

What is also indefensible is the failure of the rest of the media to confront Romney on his dishonesty.