Ryan: Carter era was better than Obama’s

Associated Press

GREENVILLE, N.C.

Paul Ryan delivered a scathing criticism of President Barack Obama’s stewardship of the nation’s economy Monday, arguing that even conservative punching bag Jimmy Carter’s presidency was better as Democrats streamed to North Carolina to nominate Obama for a second term.

“The president can say a lot of things and he will,” the Republican vice presidential candidate told more than 2,000 supporters in East Carolina University’s student recreation center, about 230 miles east of the Democratic National Convention site in Charlotte. “But he can’t tell you that you’re better off. Simply put, the Jimmy Carter years look like the good old days compared to where we are right now.”

The Romney/Ryan campaign said Ryan is to lead a rally this morning at the Westlake Recreation Center, near Cleveland. He then will go to Iowa to campaign.

The message, comparing today’s economic problems with the troubled economic conditions of the Carter administration, is part of a broader GOP strategy to ask voters whether they are better off now than they were four years ago. Polling suggests the criticism may resonate with voters frustrated with the pace of economic recovery.

Democrats argued that conditions have improved since Obama took office, with the president and Vice President Joe Biden focusing Monday on the administration’s 2009 rescue of U.S. automakers, which GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney opposed at the time. At a union rally in Toledo, Obama said the jobs that were preserved help workers enter the middle class while the auto companies symbolize the country’s innovative and industrial abilities.

Republicans said Obama was running away from a poor economic record.

Before leaving Greenville, Ryan told a crowd of 700, “After another four years of this, who knows what it’ll look like then. We’re not going to let that happen.”

Romney, meanwhile, will spend much of the week in New Hampshire and Vermont preparing for three fall debates with Obama, the first on Oct. 3.