Mitt Romney surrogate: It wasn't 'a gaffe' ... fewer firemen, cops, and teachers would be better

The Obama campaign is hammering Romney for his comments Mitt Romney campaign surrogate John Sununu is upset about the media coverage of Romney's Friday afternoon comments about wanting fewer fire fighters, police officers, and teachers:

People ought to stop jumping on it as as gaffe and understand there's wisdom in the comments.

And what might that wisdom be?

"There are municipalities, there are states where there is flight of population, and as the population goes down, you need fewer teachers. As technology contributes to community security and dealing with issues that firefighters have to issue, you would hope that you can as a taxpayer see the benefits of the efficiency in personnel you can get out of that," Sununu said during an interview on MSNBC's "Jansing & Co." Monday, prefacing that he was speaking "as a taxpayer" and not a representative of the Romney campaign. "There may be others who run away from those comments, but I'm going to tell you that there are places where just pumping money in to add to the public payroll is not what the taxpayers of this country want."

While I agree with Sununu that Romney's comments weren't a gaffe'Romney has previously said that firing public sector workers will create private sector jobs'it's notable that even as Sununu defends Romney, he's not actually defending what Romney said.

Sununu was speaking as though Romney were running for mayor or governor of a city or state, but Romney isn't seeking regional office, he's seeking national office, and he's running on a platform of laying off teachers, firefighters, and cops across the entire country. That's a bad enough idea based on the simple fact that we need those kinds of public servants, but it's also bad for the economy as a whole. Since President Obama took office, we've lost more than a half-million public sector jobs, and that hasn't made the economy better: it's made things worse.