Romney camp chooses not to distinguish "fact" from truth

Romney's claim that women make up the vast majority of workers who lost their jobs since President Obama took office is a factual statement, but it's not a truthful one. From the WSJ:

The number of employed U.S. male workers was 67.4 million in March, down 3.3 million since the recession started in December 2007, and 57,000 jobs fewer than when the Obama administration began, according to the Labor Department's monthly survey of employers. At its recent low in February 2010, employment of men was 64.7 million. The number of employed female workers was 65.4 million in March, 1.8 million below the level in December 2007 and 683,000 less than in January 2009. Employment of women bottomed at 64.6 million in September 2010. Looked at another way, since the recession began, the number of male workers has fallen 4.6% while the number of female workers has declined 2.7%. Since Mr. Obama took office, both figures are down by 1% or less.

This is more than economic sleight of hand. In previous downturns and recoveries, male-dominated industries like construction and manufacturing were among the first to cut jobs - and among the first to rehire once the economy turns around. Jobs that are held disproportionately by women - teachers and health-care workers, among them - were typically trimmed later in a recession and came back more slowly.

By the way, Marc Ambinder has a good piece on the GQ website about the Hilary Rosen flap and what it says about the way Washington works:

Mitt Romney, by his own admission, needs women to like him. And therefore, he needs to find ways to prove that he's on the side of women. And his campaign, along with the Republican National Committee and the conservative tribe, has been looking for a way to force Democrats to defend their own views of women in a way that shifts the spotlight from Romney's record to something else. To turn Rosen's remarks into something graver, the level of outrage had to be magnified, artificially. The story can't be "Democratic consultant says something dumb on CNN." It has to be "Democratic consultant says something so outrageous, something so harmful, that we sober politicians are going to spend our entire today DEMANDING punishment, and justice, for you, Jane Q. Citizen." To get from nothing to everything requires the manufacturing of outrage, which is very easily magnified by the tribal instincts of activists, which, in turn, is easily broadcast by social media.

Problem two: Hilary Rosen is one person. And she is not formally affiliated with the president. And there's no reason to think that Barack Obama supports or even takes notice of her views on women. The solution is to fabricate a correspondence between Rosen's views on women and the president's views about women. This is easy. Once again, tribalist instincts take over. Rosen is a powerful Democrat who, gosh, visited the White House more times than Leon Panetta did (she actually did not, but whatever), and therefore must always be and is always speaking directly for the president and channeling his views.

[CUT]

At the end of the day, though, all of these cognitive manipulations boil down to the motive force of politics, and that is tribalism: if the other side does it, it must be bad. And political consultants are paid to create as much separation between the tribes as possible. There are skillful psychological manipulators on both sides of America's two islands, and elections often degenerate into cycles upon cycles of outrage signification. This is perhaps fortunate, in that it keeps parity in the system. It is unfortunate because it is an artificial construct designed to bring out the worst in people.