Mitt Romney wants you to cut him the slack on the economy he would not give President Obama

(Steve Benen, Rachel Maddow Blog) Mitt Romney interviewed by Larry Kudlow:

But if they want to see this economy come roaring back with good'with good jobs, they ought to vote for me, in my view. And we ought to give, whichever president is going to be elected, at least six months or a year to get those policies in place.

That's quite a shift from what Romney was saying eight months ago. Then he was essentially blaming Barack Obama for jobs lost in the year before he became president. Romney has since shifted a bit and allowed the president 11 days warm-up time. Obama only becomes responsible for the unemployment disaster that he inherited as of February 2009.

Steve Benen at the Rachel Maddow blog has built the chart above illustrating the difference between using the old Romney claim that responsibility for the course of the economy begins immediately and that it doesn't began until six or 12 months into a president's term.

[L]ook what happens when we start the clock, as Romney suggests, six months to a year after President Obama was sworn in. In fact, if we don't hold Obama's first year against him, the economy has added over 3.7 million jobs overall during his presidency, and over 4.2 million in the private sector.

As we know all too well, the economy is not generating enough jobs to get us back to where we were in December 2007 when the Great Recession began. Stubborn obstructionism from the party for which Romney is now the standard-bearer has made certain of that. Determined to make Obama fail, as per Rush Limbaugh's prescription, it has worked diligently to ensure that the economic downturn exacts as much pain on the working classes as possible while laying out fat cushions for the top tiers. Exactly what Romney proposes to do a lot more of starting with Day One.