Updated 4:55 PM
Rick Perry’s campaign is up with a new ad titled”Lazy.” It goes after President Obama for recent comments he made to CEOs suggesting that US lawmakers have “been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades” by assuming foreign competitors would have a hard time catching up.
Here’s what he said, responding to a question specifically on policy barriers to trade: “We’ve been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — ‘Well, people would want to come here’ — and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.”
And here’s how that came out in Perry’s ad:
Perry’s not the only one highlighting the quote. “Sometimes I just don’t think that President Obama understands America,” Romney said at a factory in South Carolina on Tuesday. “Now, I say that because this week, or was it last week, he said that Americans are lazy. I don’t think that describes Americans.”
Democratic trackers American Bridge pushed back against Romney on Wednesday, however, highlighting a passage from his own book “No Apology” that sounds pretty similar:
We have been accustomed to being the world’s leading nation for so long, enjoying the freedom, security, and prosperity that comes with that leadership, that we have tended to avoid the hard work that overcoming challenges requires. When I was about ten, I asked my dad how he thought his company’s Rambler automobile could ever successfully compete with General Motors; they were so far ahead that catching up appeared impossible. He said something that has since been widely attributed to him: “There is nothing as vulnerable as entrenched success.” I believe that our many years of success may, in fact, be the greatest obstacle we face. In election after election, candidates have told us that simple measures will solve our challenges, and that their election alone will guarantee a bright future. We have joined in the cheering for this heady prospect. But much more than cheering is going to be required in the years ahead.
Romney spokesman Andrea Saul denied to Politico that the two candidates had the same message. “On the same page that your excerpt comes from, Mitt Romney says that the president should defend the United States, he rejected the view that America is in decline, he restated his belief in American exceptionalism and he asserted that America is destined to remain the brightest hope of the world,” she said.
