What We Can Glean from the Candidates' Closing Arguments in Iowa
Mitt Romney's campaign gets a turn at playing the partial-quoting game after Rick Santorum made the mistake of saying, "I don't care what the unemployment rate's gonna be. It doesn't matter to me," at a campaign event on Monday. Santorum was saying that the larger issue his campaign focused on was "freedom," not moment-to-moment economic data, but of course when isolated, it feeds directly into one of the strongest critiques of Santorum -- that he's too focused on social issues in a year in which economic woes will perhaps decide the general election. And so the Romney campaign has jumped on it. "Wow. Sen. Santorum may not care about the unemployment rate in this country or the nearly 24 million Americans struggling for work, but Mitt Romney does and is running to get people back to work," said Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul, according to BuzzFeed's Zeke Miller. We'd pity Santorum for the attack ads he's about to see that comment running in, but with the hits Romney has taken for unfortunate sound bites from "corporations are people" to "I'm not concerned about the very poor," we guess it's time his rival had a turn.
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