By Tom Blumer | Special to Ohio Watchdog

Tom Blumer

Jackie Kucinich seems to think her readers are dumber than a box of rocks.

In her coverage last weekend of Mitt Romney‘s campaign, the USA Today reporter said the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s contention that President Obama‘s economic policies have seriously harmed the country and obviously held back its recovery won’t be seen as valid by many voters, because so many states he is visiting have seen their economies improve.

Specifically, she wrote from Newark, Ohio that Romney’s “message comes at an inopportune time in a state where the latest employment numbers show the jobless rate dropping from April’s 7.4% to 7.3% in May, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.”

By Kucinich’s “logic,” since Ohio’s unemployment rate is below the national average and continues to go down as the state reportedly continues to add jobs, Romney should pack his bags and go elsewhere, because in the Buckeye State, Obama’s policies must be working pretty well.

Give me a break, Jackie. Ohio’s unemployment rate is almost a point below the rest of the nation because since January of last year, its state government has been doing the exact opposite of what the federal government has done since Obama took office.

Instead of running annual trillion-dollar deficits, Ohio under Gov. John Kasich stared down a projected two-year, $8 billion budget deficit with targeted cost cutting, overall spending control, no tax increases and no talk of “a balanced approach” — which in Washington, D.C. really means, “Let’s raise taxes and make promises to cut spending which we’ll never keep.” After seeing the Buckeye State’s credit rating downgraded in January 2011 as former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland was leaving office, Standard & Poor’s upgraded it from “negative” to “stable” in July. A month later, S&P downgraded the debt of the U.S. government.

Though it obviously beats the national rate of 8.2 percent, since when is Ohio’s 7.3 percent unemployment rate acceptable? Kasich and his administration certainly don’t believe it is. He and other Midwestern governors like Mitch Daniels in Indiana, Rick Snyder in Michigan and Scott Walker in Wisconsin are doing the best they can in difficult circumstances because, like the rest of the nation, they have been dealt really bad hands by the Obama administration.

Ohioans are anything but satisfied with a 7.3 percent unemployment rate, but they also know it would be much worse if it wasn’t for what Team Kasich has done. Other states dealt essentially the same cards aren’t doing so well. As I noted in a previous post, the worst underperformers — California, Illinois, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and New York — have governors who are Democrats or who might as well be Democrats. Imagine that, Kucinich.

Romney and the GOP’s congressional candidates are promising to apply approaches similar to those seen in Ohio and other legitimately improving Midwestern states to Washington, D.C. Romney should have a good chance to win the state, because its residents have seen what is working firsthand — and it’s certainly not the result of anything the Obama administration has done. The idea that we might get four more years of the alternative — “stimulus” which stimulates nothing, regulatory overreach and ruinous deficits without end — is almost too much to bear.