Perhaps some of you have heard about the fiasco with Mitt Romney, and how he flip-flopped on his statement that "Obama made the economy worse."Essentially, he recently took back his words and said "Well, I didn't say that he made the economy worse...."

*Open Mouth. Insert Foot in Mouth. Close Mouth. Chew Vigorously.*

btw, you can get a slightly biased review on this here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20076136-503544.html

What type of consequences this will have on his campaign remains to be seen. His flip-flopping aside, it would be interesting to see if his primary opponents will attack him on this, or side with him silently.

Why?

I'm glad you asked.

Unfortunately, the GOP mantra has become "Obama has made the economy worse," and has been held to be a self-evident analysis. That, however, spells only a part of the truth.

CNN, MSNBC, and FOX can say what they want about the economy. Here's a chart from the BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis) that shows a wee bit of improvement in our economic growth from the devastating numbers of 2009.

Here's the catch. While these numbers may show baseline growth, GDP does NOT take government debt and deficit numbers into account. In other words, it just shows economic activity, how much is going on with the money we have.

For example, if we start paying off our debt, we'll have less money to spend, and there will be less stuff going on with that money. Hence, our GDP will fall.

So, what does this have to do with Romney's takeback? Well, here's the deal. The GDP shows some improvement in our economy, but it does not tell the whole story. When NBC, MSNBC, CBS, and other news sources say that our GDP is growing, hence our economy is getting better, they are employing the logical fallacy of equivocation. GDP is NOT a %100 accurate reading of the state of our economy. Heck, with all the debt we're in right now, I doubt it's even %75 accurate. (Don't quote me on that, though.)

If we're gonna talk about how the United States is doing overall, look at the simple numbers: Unemployment is at about %9.1, (oh, and remember how the President said that it would not go above %8?) our debt is at an all-time high at $14 Trillion, (I don't even WANT to put all those zeroes up there... too depressing...) and while we're at it, take a gander at the CBO's estimate on our President's deficit spending:

Yikes.

Bottom Line: While the GDP is getting better slowly, unemployment still sucks, debt still sucks, and the deficit spending level still sucks. In terms of GDP, Romney was wrong. But in terms of everything else, he pretty much hit the mark.

You can choose which marker you want to use.