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Romney campaign reminds voters of Obama’s 2008 Minnesota visit [VIDEO]

Neil Munro White House Correspondent
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Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign team sought to deflate President Barack Obama’s Minnesota speech Friday by sending out a clip of Obama’s infamously grandiose address in the same location four years ago.

“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … this was the moment when we ended a war, and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth,” Obama declared June 3, 2008.

Obama had a far more modest agenda for his June 1 speech in Minnesota.

He complained about his inability to impact gas prices, the European economic crisis or Congress. “Now is not the time to play politics, now is not the time to sit on your hands,” he said after noting the bad jobs news from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The BLS announced June 1 that the private sector had added only 69,000 jobs in May, amid continued workforce growth of roughly 150,000 graduates and immigrants. The unemployment rate nudged up from 8.1 percent to 8.2 percent, five months before election day.

“We’re still not creating [jobs] as fast as we want. … Our economy is still facing some serious headwinds,” Obama insisted.

Four years ago, Obama declared that “if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless.”

“What a difference four years makes,” said Romney spokesman Ryan Williams.

“Even the Obama White House admits that the president is no longer ‘healing’ the economy.”

The hard-nosed P.R. move followed the Romney campaign’s May 31 protesting of a Boston press event for Obama’s chief campaign strategic, David Axelrod. Romney’s supporters hooted and chanted during the Axelrod event, and taunted Axelrod with chants about the failure of Solyndra, an Obama administration backed solar company that lost taxpayers over half a billion dollars.

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