turned around and president obama has. can i chris: go ahead. let me respond. the president is going to be held accountable to the standards that the president made himself. he promised 8% unemployment. if fact, it is even worse. his transition team promised that the point we would be at 6% unemployment. that is not true you. the other piece of all of this is that debbie wasserman schultz adds up all the people hired but doesn t substract all of the people laid off, number one. all of the pee people, every or month hundreds of thousands that aren t added into the number who said look, the economy is so bad i m not even going to be looking for a job across this country. the president will be held to the standards that he set himself and right now he is failing to meet those standards. and in fact, debbie wasserman schultz and nancy pelosi were
trending in the right way a powerful feel to things are on the right track. and that is a challenge for somebody like governor romney and in his one of the questions in the abc debate you saw him not answer the specifics about his economic plan but turn it to american exceptionalism and this broad general election argument and this is really what he is going to try to pitch. chris: a.b., i want to pick up on that. it is clear that by historical standards unemployment is still going to be very high by november of 2012 as i mentioned with congresswoman wasserman schultz the highest unemploy hadn t rate any president had to get reelected since fdr was ronald reagan. on the other hand, president obama is going to be able to argue as bret said we are making progress and things are headed in the right direction. which do you think is the stronger side of the argument, the absolute numbers or the
debate stage. romney won in iowa. looks more like the debate and race is about who will rise up and be his closest rival. chris: thanks for that. with the battle for the republican nomination starting to take ha shape we want to take a look at what lies ahead in the general election. joining us to preview the race are the heads of the two parties. from racine, wisconsin, reince priebus. and debbie wasserman schultz. we got good news for the nation on friday. 200,000 jobs created in the last month. the unemployment rate down to 8.5%. the lowest in almost three years. while it is good news for the country isn t it taking away your strongest argument to replace barack obama? well, not at all, chris. i mean obviously 8.5% is unacceptable. clearly going taking down one
congresswoman wasserman schultz. the numbers are better. 200,000 jobs created, 8.5%. but you 13 million americans still out of work and the fact is that no president has been reelected with unemployment over 7.2% since fdr back in the 1930s. so, better, yes. not good. certainly not where we want to be. and it is important to look at where we were when president obama took office. i mean he did inherit an economy that and the largest set of problems of any president since fdr and was in a situation where we were bleeding 750,000 jobs a month when took office. now, three years later, 22 straight months of job growth in the private sector. you know, reince, it is amazing, disappointing actually that he seems disappointed in the progress we have been able to make. we had 22 straight months of job growth. almost 3 million jobs created in the private sector. 200,000 alone just in the last
he gets the blue ribbon and this is just one more chapter in barack obama s book of trampling on the constitution, on growing a government that we already can t afford and he doesn t seem to want to stop. that is what this issue is at least in my mind. chris: let me give congresswoman wasserman schultz a chance. the fact it the democrats came up with the idea of the pro forma sessions to block president bush from making the recess appointments. wouldn t you be howling if bush made this appointment and was ignoring congress the way barack obama is now. what we are howling about on behalf of the american people is the basic premise of exactly what your question was. that the republicans didn t question the credentials, didn t question that he was qualified. they don t like the consumer protection bureau. as a result because they have