Mitt Romney’s campaign was downright giddy over the fact that Rick Santorum told an Illinois crowd Monday that “the issue in this race is not the economy” and that the unemployment rate “doesn’t matter to me.”
The two quotes are being portrayed in the press as a huge gaffe for Santorum. But even by the standards of a presidential campaign, the versions presented by Romney are heavily edited in order to distort Santorum’s point.
“If anyone needed evidence that Rick Santorum is an economic lightweight, they needn’t look any further than his statement today that the economy is not the issue in this race,” Romney spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said in a statement.
But taken in its full context, Santorum doesn’t appear to have been minimizing the economy as an election-year issue at all. He was making a broader point that the nation’s economic problems stem from government policies with which he disagrees, a fact that’s clear from his very next sentence, which the Romney campaign left out of its press release.
“The issue in this race is not the economy,” Santorum said. “The reason the economy is an issue in this race is because the federal government is oppressing its people and taking away your freedom and the economy is suffering as a result.”
Santorum has suggested in the past that if the economy continues to recover, the GOP should be prepared to emphasize other issues, like national security, so voters can see clear differences between the two campaigns in the general election. But Santorum is pretty clearly suggesting the the economy and jobs are important, even if he takes a somewhat roundabout route to saying as much.
In a similar move, the Romney campaign put out a heavily clipped video on Monday in which Santorum says, “I don’t care what the unemployment rate’s going to be.”
The line sure looks bad on its own. And Romney is betting it won’t play in Peoria, Ill., where he told an audience that “I do care about the unemployment rate — it does bother me,” presumably in contrast with Santorum.
But again, the full context, via Politico, adds a lot more nuance to the line. Santorum is making a broader point that the underlying philosophy of his economic policies is what’s important:
SANTORUM: We need a candidate who’s going to be a fighter for freedom. Who’s going to get up and make that the central theme in this race because it is the central theme in this race. I don’t care what the unemployment rate’s going to be. Doesn’t matter to me. My campaign doesn’t hinge on unemployment rates and growth rates. It’s something more foundational that’s going on. We have one nominee who says he wants to run the economy. What kind of conservative says that the president runs the economy? What conservative says, ‘I’m the guy, because of my economic experience, that can create jobs?’ I don’t know. We conservatives generally think that government doesn’t create jobs. That what government does is create an atmosphere for jobs to be created in the private sector.
