It is verboten for Mitt Romney or his campaign surrogates to mention the most recent Republican president by name. Instead, George W. Bush — who left office as the most unpopular president in the history of presidential polling — must be referred to in every reference as Pres. Obama’s “predecessor.”
But now, just two weeks and one or two sharp shakes of the campaign Etch-A-Sketch later, it’s the Romney campaign that is blaming Romney’s weak economic record as governor of Massachusetts on, you guessed it, his predecessor, Jane Swift, a Republican.
Here is an example of Romney using the euphemism four times in one statement in mid-May:
ROMNEY: [Obama] was very critical of his predecessor for the debts his predecessor put in place. And sure it’s true you can’t blame one party or the other for all the debts this country has, because both parties in my opinion have spent too much and borrowed too much when they were in power. But he was very critical of his predecessor because the predecessor put together $4 trillion of debt over eight years. This president however — oh, by the way, he said that doing that was unpatriotic, irresponsible and unpatriotic. And he said he would cut the debt in half if he became president.Instead he doubled it, alright, he doubled it.”
And, of course, Romney is lying. Bush increased the national debt by nearly $5 trillion, and it has increased by almost exactly the same amount under Obama, in large part as a response to the financial collapse caused by the borrow-and-spend policies, anti-regulatory zeal and colossal incompetence of Bush and his Republican rubberstampers in Congress.
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