Romney: Only job Obama’s ‘interested in protecting is his own’

ROXBURY, Mass. — Mitt Romney continued to hammer President Obama as being more concerned with his own reelection than the nation’s economic woes, pointing Thursday to a recent comment by the president’s spokesman that Obama had not met with his jobs council in six months because he has “got a lot on his plate.”

“And so we took a look at his schedule and over the last six months, he has done 106 fundraisers,” Romney said, speaking to reporters at a truck repair shop. “So I think you learn something about the president’s priorities. The job he’s interested in protecting is his own. The job that should be protected is the jobs of men and women in this country who want to get jobs, who want to get back to work, who want to have rising incomes again.”

He cited new reports of increasing jobless claims and a continued decline in consumer confidence to buttress his point, and once again highlighted a remark Obama made last week that he said showed that Obama believed government created success, not individuals.

“It wasn’t a gaffe,” Romney said. “It was instead his ideology. The president does in fact believe that people who build enterprises like this really aren’t responsible for it, but in fact it’s a collective success of the whole society that somehow builds enterprises like this. In my view, we ought to celebrate people who started enterprises and employ other people.”

Romney was referring to a comment Obama made Friday when he said, “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

In his full comment, Obama lauded individual achievement but said success is aided by others, such as schoolteachers or road builders, but Romney used the statement to argue that Obama has a different world view that discounts the success of the individual.

“I just don’t think the president by his comments suggests an understanding of what it is that makes America such a unique nation, why people have come here for hundreds of years,” Romney said. “It’s because this is the land of opportunity. We welcome people here with dreams and say to them come built it, not come here because government will give it to you but come here because this is a place where your dreams will be good for you and good for our entire nation.”

Earlier, Romney toured the truck shop as dozens of protesters held signs nearby that said “Dear Mitt, Thanks for nothing. [Love], Massachusetts” and chanted “Release your taxes, what are you hiding?” and “Shame on Romney, Shame on Bain.”

The shop’s founder, Brian Maloney Sr., said, “We’ve done a lot for the neighborhood, it’s a shame those people are out there.”

Romney responded, “Oh, that’s the nature of politics. There are always two teams. We’re always bothering each other’s teams.”

Follow Politics Now on Twitter

Seema.mehta@latimes.com

Twitter: @LATSeema